


Launch

by tb_ll57



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Badass Quatre, Coups, Dolphins, I love making up politics for Gundam Wing, M/M, Male Friendship, Politics, Post-Endless Waltz, Preventers (Gundam Wing), Psychic Abilities, Rebellion, Relationship(s), Undecided Relationship(s), Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-10-29 06:56:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 73,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10848783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: What really got to me was the ocean. Water isn’t exactly plentiful in any of the colonies. I’d seen a fountain in L5 once and thought I’d seen more water than I’d ever see again. To see an ocean, it was... it was seeing the difference between Earth and the colonies. Seeing what we’ve lost by going into space.





	1. One

‘Food or bath?’ Duo asked, dropping his pack to the garage floor and stripping out of his gear.

‘Bath,’ Quatre answered. ‘A very long, very hot bath.’ He fumbled the strap of his helmet, and bent double to pull it off his head. It hit the concrete floor with a clatter, and Quatre shook his head like a dog, spraying sweat everywhere. Duo made exaggerated noises of disgust, but he was grinning when Quatre straightened.

‘I like the look,’ Wufei said laconically. Quatre crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, but Wufei didn’t see it– already up the steps and into their townhouse.

‘Well, it’s food for me,’ Duo answered his own question. ‘Wufei’s volunteered to cook, which means good food for once.’

‘My food is always excellent,’ Quatre objected mildly.

‘You mean your food is always take-away.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Enjoy the water.’ Duo bumped Quatre’s shoulder as he passed. ‘We’ll put it on ice for you.’

Without doubt, the best thing they had done to the townhouse was update the bathroom. Quatre left his very ripe hiking suit on the rug, took out the largest towel in the linen drawer, and turned on all three shower heads to full blast. Very welcome steam billowed into the glass-walled stall; Quatre slipped under the water with a heart-felt sigh. When the heat began to break down the numb feeling in his extremities, Quatre reached for Duo’s shampoo– it smelled the nicest– and squeezed a judicious amount into his hand. His hair felt lank and greasy even soaked, and it was a genuine relief to scrub it clean. His chin evidenced some serious stubble, but he would have time to shave in the morning before heading to the office. He left it happily.

He’d nearly finished with the soap and was balancing on one foot to wash the other when the door opened. Duo’s voice said, ‘How you feeling, buddy?’

‘Almost human,’ Quatre answered with a pretend-sigh.

‘Bet you smell almost human now, too.’ They both laughed. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but you have a call.’

He couldn’t hold back his groan. ‘I thought I’d have at least an hour before they found me!’

Duo laughed this time. ‘News for you– you’ve had your hour.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘Well, forty-five minutes. I took down the number, I told him you’d call back when you were done. But you’d better finish up, or he’ll think you spend all day under the water.’

‘Just who did you tell I was in the shower?’

‘No-one special. I think he’s a General, or something.’ He couldn’t see it, but Quatre knew the sound of a grin when he heard one.

‘Captain Huw Mostyn, perhaps?’

‘Could be.’ There was a short pause. Then, more sympathetically, Duo said, ‘Wufei’s on his way home soon. He'll say good-bye before he goes. Dinner's in the kitchen.’ The door clicked shut softly behind him.

Quatre finished quickly– albeit reluctantly– and dried himself perfunctorily. He threw on a terry-cloth robe, stuffed his suit into the laundry in the hall, and jogged to the north-east study. As promised, a note sat on the ‘vid keyboard with a number scrawled in pen. Quatre composed himself, and dialed.

Immediately an ESA logo appeared on his screen, but the number must have been private, because Mostyn’s face followed directly, not a secretary’s. Mostyn wore a pleasant smile on his tan face, but his dark eyebrows climbed when he took in Quatre’s state.

 _‘I would have waited for you to dress,’_ the Captain said.

Quatre grinned. ‘You would have waited until tomorrow, then. I don’t intend to put on anything more taxing than this robe for the next twelve hours.’

_‘Long weekend?’_

‘Hiking in the Alps,’ Quatre explained, absently straightening the desk. ‘Bank holiday weekend.’

Mostyn faked a shudder. _‘That’s a little too much altitude for me.’_

‘What can I do for you today, Captain?’

_‘Calling to let you know the schedule for the launch. We’ve been delayed by a week– some last minute adjustment to the guidance systems.’_

‘I hope nothing major.’

_‘We’ve got ourselves a crack-shot engineer– suggested some improvements. Never been done before, but she swears by it.’_

‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed.’ Quatre grinned. ‘Waiting for download.’

 _‘Sending.’_ A moment later, the ‘vid chimed, announcing the arrival of the schedule. Quatre saved it to the desktop.

‘Any surprises?’ he asked.

_‘Exactly what we’ve been expecting. You’re slated for a good hour of speaking, you know. I hope you make good notes.’_

‘You get used to it.’ He slumped back in his chair. The aches he’d expected were starting to set in, especially in the knees and calves. ‘I’m terribly excited. It’s hard to believe that last year your ship only existed on paper. I’m dying to see it in person.’

 _‘It’s your ship, Mr Winner,’_ Mostyn said crisply, but he was smiling. _‘Without your grants we never would reached the finish-line.’_

‘The push for deep-space exploration is sort of sucking up all the available funding,’ Quatre agreed. ‘I may not have set foot on the mother-planet until I was fifteen, but I do think we ought to learn more about our origins before we set off for other galaxies.’

 _‘Mother-planet,’_ Mostyn repeated, sounding bemused. He rubbed his moustaches. _‘Sometimes I forget how different the colonials really are.’_

‘Judging by the progress they’re making with the Mars Terraforming Project, it may be shared vocabulary in a few generations,’ Quatre retorted drily. ‘Earth isn’t home to all of us, but it’s just as important to the colonials as it is to those of you born dirt-side.’

 _‘And the International Oceania Exploration team is lucky you feel that way.’_ Mostyn grinned around his hand. _‘So we can expect you to stay on board with us?’_

‘Absolutely,’ Quatre said firmly. ‘I haven’t gone this far with you to drop out just before the maiden voyage.’

 _‘Excellent!’_ The Captain beamed, flashing white teeth over the ‘vid. _‘I'll keep the second-nicest cabin for you. The best goes to me, obviously.'_

He had the sinking feeling he often got when he realised, too late, that he’d agreed to something without listening to all the terms. ‘Wait a second,’ he began, holding up both hands. ‘A cabin? For the launch?’

 _‘For the voyage!’_ Mostyn was laughing. _‘Now, don’t panic. Think about it. You’re as much an architect of this ship as the men who built it. If you hadn’t shepherded this project through the Senate it would have died last year. You belong with the crew, most especially for the maiden voyage. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Quatre. A chance to see the deep ocean the way no man has ever seen it.’_

‘Surely you don’t have room on your ship for a businessman,’ Quatre tried. He was interrupted, and bit his lip against a smile.

 _‘Bollocks,’_ Mostyn said bluntly. _‘I believe your pilot license is up-to-date. Not to mention your international renown as a diplomat and your interest in science. This is a voyage of discovery. I seem to recall you were the one who came up with the weekly broadcast to grade-school classrooms? You have less to learn than school children?’_

A flush crept up his neck, warming him. ‘I don’t believe I said that,’ he managed levelly. ‘But still... I have obligations. I can’t just leave WEI.’

 _‘WEI has been mobile since you were fifteen. Isn’t that what you told me?’_ Mostyn was winning, and he knew it. _‘We’ll be more than happy to accommodate your needs. But take some time to think about it. You’ve got an extra two weeks, now.’_

Quatre stared blindly at the screen, already envisioning it, and wishing he didn’t have such an active imagination. ‘I can’t even swim,’ he murmured at last.

The Captain laughed. _‘I’d say you’ve got incentive to learn, then.’_ He saluted cheerfully. _‘As for me– I’m going to go put some champagne on ice.’_

‘That kind of confidence is a little annoying,’ Quatre muttered. He put on a smile that felt reluctant, and tried consciously to brighten it. ‘I’ll be in touch. I will at least consider it.’

_‘I know you will. Mostyn out.’_

‘Good night.’ He keyed ‘end,’ but sat staring for longer than he needed to. He was still sitting there when Wufei found him, bringing him a plate of microwaved snow peas and prawns. Quatre said something grateful, taking the plate and starting to eat without half-recognising what he was eating. Wufei perched on the desk beside him.

‘You look a little shell-shocked,’ he said.

Quatre looked up, and swallowed a mouthful chewed so much it had turned to mush. ‘I’ve had an interesting invitation.’ He recapped his conversation with Mostyn. He ended sceptically, saying, ‘Can you fathom it? Me, on a boat?’

‘Ship,’ Wufei corrected. ‘Your ship, actually.’ He tapped the edge of the desk. ‘I think you're secretly pleased.'

'I...' Quatre moved a pea pod about the edge of his plate, smearing brown soy sauce in an arc. 'I am,' he admitted. 'Of course I thought what it would be like to go. But it was impossible, so I didn't let myself wish too hard.'

'When exactly did you decide there was anything gained in life by denying yourself the things you really want?'

'Says you. Duo and I practically had to kidnap you to drag you on a mini-break.'

Wufei's long stare out the window had a brittle edge to it. 'You're not me,' he said finally. 'Be glad of that.'

Silence fell between them. Quatre's appetite vanished with it. 'It's a nine-month voyage. I really can't... I really can't take that kind of time away from WEI.' He ate a large prawn, forcing it down with a swallow. ‘This is good,’ he added, prodding a bit and trying not to, but Wufei blinked at last, eyes returning from their thousand-mile stare to the present.

‘Thank you.’ Wufei smiled briefly. ‘Why would you have to?’ he asked then, gesturing to Quatre's rather hazardously overstuffed study. ‘Take time away, that is. You spend hours in here every week. You brought two briefcases to Switzerland. And I think you managed three mergers from the cockpit of your Gundam.’

Quatre rolled his eyes. ‘Two,’ he said airily.

Wufei took a pea from Quatre’s plate and delicately licked his fingers. ‘Do you know how to swim?’

'That would be a way to go out, wouldn't. Quatre Winner, heir to asteroid mining forture, drowns in two inches of water in a training pool.' He scrubbed a hand through his damp hair. 'It is impossible. It's a dream. I'm done with dreaming.'

'Too bad,' Wufei said, and stood. 'It's what I've always liked best about you. Thank you for the trip. Even if you did have to drag me along, I... it was good to remember there are... good to remember there are good things, out there.' He inclined his upper half in a bow, and turned to the door. There he hesitated. 'There will always be a reason not to,' he said then, looking back. 'It's easy to tell yourself the time isn't right, that you'll have another chance. But eventually you have to decide. It's worth it, or it's not. That's the only real question.'

'It is, isn't it.'

'Good-bye, Quatre.'

'Good night.' He smiled fondly, though Wufei ducked his head and was gone before it could linger on him. Quatre took no offence at it-- Wufei was just like that, sometimes, always dogged by a grey cloud where others saw only sunshine. But his words, ever sombre and ever candid, stayed behind when Wufei himself had gone.

Worth it. Or not. Quatre looked at the overstuffed bookcase, the pile of briefs that never shrank, the computer he never turned off, the detritus of a business that had somehow become a life, and wondered if this feeling was like breathing underwater. Trying to find the oxygen as the pressure caging his lungs grew worse. It had followed him to the Alps, yes, and before that to Peru, and before that St Petersburg, and whatever had come before that whenever Duo dripped honey in his ear about an escape. But he didn't escape it, ever, really, and he never made a serious attempt. He compromised. He was good at compromising.

Worth it. Was it?

Nine months. He'd give another forty years to WEI. Nine months to himself wasn't all that much, not really. And it wasn't as if there wouldn't be phones and internet on the ship. And the opportunities of a lifetime, to be the first to see what lived below the waters of the planet. To not have to wait for it to show up in a museum with his family name on the wing, to touch it for himself, to be out there in it, not wistfully wondering at it amongst the crowd. He wanted to. He definitely wanted to.

Hell. The question answered itself, really. It was all the yelling and disappointment he didn't want to face. But even the thought of facing off his Board of shareholders didn't sting as much as he'd expected.

Quatre rose, gathering up plate and silverware and napkin, and went searching for Duo. This warranted a drink, and a friend to talk it over with. A friend who never told him no. Quatre found himself grinning as he descended the stairs, grinning ear to ear, and didn't bother to repress it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this fic in 2005 or 2006, I think, and it shows its age. I've updated it a bit, in transferring it here from LiveJournal, but it mostly remains a signpost of themes I have an enduring interest in, and less so of the skills to best express them.


	2. Two

It took a week to convince his company that his availability would be severely limited for nine continuous months, and to plan accordingly. He also flew out to Costa Dorada in southern Spain, to be near the IEO launch site and to get intensive swimming and diving lessons. His mornings and afternoons were spent in the water, his evenings belonged to his investors and his branch managers, and his nights were usually spent in exhausted sleep. It had the quality of one of his mini-breaks with the other pilots. Though he lived with Duo, they were frequently joined by Wufei, who shared their competitive spirit and did his best to out-do them in energy. It had been five years since the Eve War, but they shared a connection born of being the only five people in the world who had experienced a very dark time in history. The kind of decisions they had been obliged to make, themselves so young and so often without any relationships except the knowledge that other Gundam pilots existed– their uniqueness had kept them together despite their many differences. To Quatre, they were people who knew what he had been before he had taken on the mantle of his father’s economic empire. They were people who knew why he loved Earth and why he was kept up at nights thinking about the colonies. They were people who knew what it was like to jump a mile when a car backfired nearby, to miss the weight of a gun at your back when you were suddenly lost in a crowd, to feel your skin crawl if you couldn’t sit facing the door.

They were also people accustomed to pushing themselves to their physical limits, and Quatre had always been painfully aware of his skinny arms, his short stature, and his pampered upbringing. Though they complimented him freely on testing into his open water instructor status in a week and a half, he remained convinced that any one of them could have done it faster. Mostyn’s amazement he dismissed immediately. He made a few coral dives, practised swimming with dolphins and smaller whales. On consideration, he brushed up on the IEO’s communications software. The chances of him actually having to pilot anything bigger than a high-speed, single-man sub were slim, but there was no point in being under-prepared. That led to the thought that he should brush up on any number of things– hot topics in marine biology, for instance. Two weeks seemed like hardly enough time to learn everything it suddenly appeared he should know.

He was in the tank with a dolphin named Albert when he got a call from his sister Badra. He ran out his tank time while on the ‘vid and had to yield to someone else. He found a bench to finish the call, and peeled off the upper half of his wetsuit. The spring sun was warm on his bare chest, and there was a light breeze through the compound. He signed off with Badra and reached for his duffle, only to notice feet behind it.

The feet belonged to the woman who had taken the tank after him. She stood with the sun directly at her back, and Quatre had to squint to look up to where her face was hidden by the glare. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

To his relief she moved, sinking down onto the bench beside him. She was a strawberry blonde, tall, square-jawed. She wore a wet-suit like his, a pair of goggles hanging from her hand, and about her neck were dog tags. She had pale freckled legs, long and muscled, under the shorts of the suit.

‘I’m Kathleen Ehrlich,’ she said. She opened the pouch at her waist, and withdrew a packet of gum. She slipped one strip into her mouth, and offered the packet to him. Quatre shook his head, then changed his mind and reached before she could put it away. He smiled at her as he popped the strip into his mouth. It tasted like cinnamon, not spearmint.

‘I’m Quatre Winner,’ he answered, and tried his best to blow a bubble. It was too tiny to make much of a pop, but it won a smile from her.

‘I know.’ She made a bigger bubble with her gum, but swallowed it back rather than popping it. ‘I’ve seen you on the ‘vid. I thought you were taller.’

He laughed a little. ‘I get that a lot, actually.’

‘I thought you’d be older, too.’ She linked her hands over her flat belly, leaning back against their shade wall. ‘You frown a lot. On the ‘vid casts.’

‘Do I?’ He ran a hand through his hair, and found it almost dry. ‘I thought I walked around with a permanent bleached-white smile plastered on my face.’

‘Only when you think people are looking.’

It wasn’t the first time a stranger had offered a critique of his personality, real or imagined. Duo offered critiques free of charge, and Trowa had shocked him once with a devastatingly blunt assessment of his character. Quatre had long ago reconciled– or at least told himself he had– his public persona with his private. Keeping the two separate kept him sane.

He said, ‘I’ll have to remember that,’ neither cool nor warm, personal nor remote.

After an uncertain, faintly remorseful pause, Kathleen said, ‘I’m the chief biologist on the IEO.’

‘I know.’ He switched the gum to his left cheek, and pulled his duffle bag onto his lap. He removed a dry set of clothing, and a towel. ‘I read your resume. It’s very impressive. Your work with cold-water corals and ecosystems was particularly fascinating.’ He glanced up to find her eyes wide and dismayed, and bit his lip. ‘I didn’t hire you,’ he added. ‘That is, I sat on the committee, but only in an unofficial capacity. The other people on the board knew a great deal more than me about marine biology, and they were proportionally more impressed with your work.’

‘Oh.’ She watched him stand and strip the wet suit. As he pulled on his khaki trousers and cotton shirt, she said, ‘You’re not very modest.’

‘Things are a little different in the colonies. We’re not as touchy about privacy.’ He straightened the lay of his collar. ‘I hope I didn’t offend you.’

‘Seeing as how there won’t be much privacy on a ship, it would be too bad if you had.’ He agreed, and was glad for at least her veneer of practicality. He finger-combed his hair, and rolled the suit into a tight, damp ball. It went into the duffle, and the duffle was zipped– just before his mobile rang again.

He sighed, and unzipped the duffle. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘It’s likely that I’ll have to take this.’

‘I can wait.’

That was unsubtle. He wondered what she wanted, even as he flipped the screen on. ‘Winner,’ he said.

It was his sister Rasha, CEO of one of his affiliate corporations. She wore the pinched look of someone suffering through the insufferable. _‘Quatre,’_ she muttered– from the side of her mouth.

It wasn’t a call she was supposed to be making, he realised, amused. ‘Yes?’ he whispered.

_‘What are the odds you can get me a bed on a boat for nine months?’_

‘Ship,’ he corrected. ‘And ships are on water, you know.’

She made a face. Rasha, like most L4 natives, had never seen more water in once place than a bathtub. She wasn’t fond of the idea. _‘Maybe I’ll look into mountain hide-aways.’_

‘You could get married,’ he countered lightly, and laughed when she pulled a more hideous face. ‘Get back to work,’ he rebuked gently. ‘I’ll call you in–‘ he mentally checked his calendar. ‘In two weeks. We’ll plan something for April.’

 _‘April it is.’_ She pressed her hands to her temples. _‘I’m in a meeting. I have to go. Two weeks, little brother.’_ She signed off without waiting for his reply.

Ehrlich was watching him when he looked up. She spat her gum into a wrapper, and tucked it away into a pocket. ‘Was that your sister?’ she asked.

‘One of them.’ He dropped the ‘vid into his own pocket. ‘Do you make a habit of eavesdropping?’

‘If you didn’t want me to listen you should have moved away.’

He decided he didn’t like this woman very much, and surmised that it was mutual. ‘Is there something specific you’d like from me, Miss?’ he asked.

Her eyes, pale blue, went narrow. ‘I heard you were coming aboard.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

He narrowed his own eyes. ‘What are the circumstances you imagine would compel me to justify myself to you?’

‘I’m a constituent.’

‘Consumer,’ he corrected. ‘I don’t hold a public office.’ He shouldered the duffle, settling the strap about his chest. ‘If you’d like statistics on WEI products and policies, I’m happy to point you toward our monthly reports or our literature.’

‘You’re not used to people questioning your motives?’

‘On the contrary. I’m obliged to defend myself and my companies daily. I’m not obliged to welcome it, particularly from someone whose own agenda is unclear.’

She glanced away first. ‘It’s not my intention to... offend you,’ she murmured.

‘That’s unfortunate.’ He gazed down at her, thoughtfully squishing his hardening lump of chewing gum against his front teeth. ‘We will be seeing quite a lot of each other,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to accept my word that I’ve agreed to join the voyage because I’m passionate about this project. At least until you have the proof you want.’

She came to her feet. She was, he noticed with dismay, taller than him. Everyone was, of course. She wandered a step or two away, then stood looking at him.

‘I guess I will,’ she replied at last. ‘I’ll try to keep an open mind. But I won’t be the only person asking these questions.’

‘Is that a warning or a threat?’ He watched her shuffle, her hands aimlessly looking for something to grip. ‘I’m a busy man. I work hard and I’m proud of my work. I do my best to give back and take only what I need. I’m excited about next week. I’m excited about the next nine months. To be frank– you’re a buzz-kill.’ He nodded once, and turned his back. She didn’t follow as he left the aquarium.


	3. Three

The party had been going since seven, though Quatre had been one of the few to arrive unfashionably on time. By nine the deck and pavilion on the beach were packed. Quatre kept a strict schedule at parties: juice after ten, no more than three beers or two champagnes before then, a single plate of hors d’oeuvres eaten no less than three hours before his projected bedtime. The aim was always to be in bed before midnight, though he managed it less and less lately. He made it to nine fifteen and his second champagne before he found any of the IEO crew. Mostyn and Ehrlich had taken a station near the raw bar.

Mostyn let out a loud roar of greeting when Quatre drifted into their circle, and Quatre abruptly found himself being pounded on the back so hard he stumbled. ‘And here’s the man of the hour!’ their captain all but shouted. ‘How’s the party, my friend?’

‘Going well so far,’ Quatre replied agreeably. ‘Are you seeing any of it from over here?’

‘We’re staying out of the way,’ Ehrlich said. She swirled the contents of a bloody mary with a flowery stick of celery. ‘Too many politicians.’

‘Some of my best friends are politicians,’ Quatre told her mildly.

Her face underwent a series of expressions. Embarrassment. Pissed off. Settled in chagrin.

Mostyn was called away by an older man Quatre thought might be the communications officer. Quatre took a sip of his champagne and thought about eating an oyster, though he’d already had his plate.

Ehrlich said, ‘I wish I could say you keep catching me on bad days. But the truth is just– most the time I’m pretty much a bitch.’

She startled him into a grin. ‘Fair enough,’ he answered. He toasted her with a little gesture of his champagne. ‘That’s a great dress.’ It was. A a-line flare from low on the waist to the knees, bare arms and little straps over the collar bones. It was a sparkly ocean blue.

‘I like your dress too.’ She reached for the oyster he’d been looking at, swallowing it off the half-shell without chewing the meat.

‘It’s a jubbah,’ Quatre corrected her. ‘Muslims wear them.’

‘Are you Muslim?’

‘Culturally, I guess,’ he said. ‘My family are Algerian.’

She ate another oyster, letting it slip down her throat, and tossed the shell into the well-disguised disposal buckets at the back of the table. ‘You don’t look much like an Arab. At all, really.’

‘My great-grandmother was white.’ He gave in to the impulse, and reached for his own oyster. It was cool and lemony on his tongue, and he chewed just a little before swallowing. He fingered the barnacles on the shell rather than tossing it away. ‘Some of her children could pass. That made a big difference in those days.’

‘Pass,’ Ehrlich repeated. ‘What, you mean pass as white?’

He affirmed with a nod. ‘My grandfather went a step further and used genetic templating with his children. So did my father.’ He tugged a lock of his blond hair. ‘Westernised our name as well.’

She was staring at him. ‘Isn’t that extreme?’

‘You tell me,’ he grinned. ‘My great-grandfather was a service engineer. I inherited a conglomerate when I turned fifteen.’

Ehrlich looked sceptical, and finished her bloody mary with a deep draw. ‘You,’ she said, ‘are why most people don’t understand colonials.’

‘Colonials are exactly the same as people born on Earth,’ he told her. ‘We just have to try harder than you do.’ Feeling that was enough of a sally for the evening, he softened it with a sly smile, and won a small upturn of her lips in response. He set his half-full glass on the table, and offered her his arm. ‘Can I convince you to dance before the speeches start?’

She contemplated him for a minute, drawing out the silence before nodding her assent. She slipped her hand about his elbow, but she was the one who led the way onto the dance floor in the middle of the pavilion. Quatre was glad her heels were small, but she still stood half a foot taller than him. When they reached a little pocket of space on the oak boards, he faced her, gently taking her hard waist for the duration of the song.

They only danced once, and then he passed Ehrlich off to Jack Kent, the helmsman, so he could go two rounds with Rani Gongryp, the Chief of Staff for the senior Kashmir senator. He yielded Rani to a middle-aged ESA lieutenant he didn’t know, and spent fifteen minutes fending off pointed commentary from Geert van het Hoff, the VP of a rival company producing computer motherboards. After that, it was a relief to hear the screech of microphones being keyed to life on the small stage on the deck. It was his cue to make his way to the platform.

He managed to slip up behind it, caught the attention of an aide, and let her attach a lapel mic to his lapel. A light breeze had kicked up while he sweated on the dance floor, and the stage was in a good position to benefit from it. He turned himself toward it, giving only half an ear to the mention of his name.

He heard it perhaps five minutes later, on the tail of polite applause. ‘We’re privileged to hear from an important financier tonight,’ the speaker was saying. ‘The Winner family have long been friends of scientific exploration and discovery, but this beautiful ship you see docked behind you represents the single largest donation to a non-profit venture in recent history. And not only has Mr Winner personally shepherded this ship into existence, he has joined the crew for their maiden voyage. Please join me now in welcoming Quatre Raberba Winner of WEI Enterprises!’

Quatre left the wing, switching on his mic with one hand and reaching for the extended hand of the speaker, who turned out to be Antony Ferdoli, a young man not much older than Quatre, who served on the Senate committee for Energy and Natural Resources. Quatre once again found his shoulder and back under attack by enthusiasm, and escaped very quickly to the slender oak podium flanked by lovely Spanish arrangements of spring flowers. A very large crowd of expectant, cheerfully tipsy, and moderately bored faces turned up to meet his arrival.

‘Thank you,’ Quatre said, and winced as his voice boomed out into the pavilion. He lowered the volume on his mic with a little twist of a knob, an action so familiar he could do it blind. ‘It is my very great pleasure to see so many well-wishers here to support the crew of the IEO. Many of you have contributed your money, your technology, your effort and your sweat to tomorrow’s launch.’ He glanced down to his wrist, and sighed at the digital flash that read ‘10.22.’ He had a long way to go.

He spread his hands along the ridged edge of the podium. ‘I was born in the L4 cluster,’ he told the crowd. ‘I had a vague impression of Earth from textbooks, from pictures, from video casts. I hadn’t ever met anyone from Earth. My father talked with great pride about the sovereignty of the colonies. Our self-sufficiency. It didn’t mean a lot to me. Until the war started. I was fifteen when the fighting began. It was also the first time I saw Earth. To understate it, I was stunned. I landed in Africa. I had never... I don’t know if I can convey what it was like to see a natural tree. Hills. A sky. But what really got to me was the ocean. Water isn’t exactly plentiful in any of the colonies. I’d seen a fountain in L5 once and thought I’d seen more water than I’d ever see again. To look on an ocean, it was... it was seeing the difference between Earth and the colonies. Seeing what we’ve lost by going into space.’

He began to wish he had made notes. Though he had plenty of practise making speeches off the cuff, the champagne had lightened his head just enough that his sentences were threatening to swallow him.

‘A man named Milargo Kemmerling sent me a fax two years ago. Speculation on an amphibious exploration team. I said I was interested. I was more interested when I got the first proposal– a fully outfitted ship with a crew of scientists. I offered to back the project. I felt that it was in line with WEI’s general philosophy. If I’d known precisely what I was in for, I might have run in the other direction.’ That got him a mild and knowing laugh from certain quarters. ‘We almost went under when we lost General and McKinsey. We almost went under again when the Senate reduced our budget by three hundred thousand. I can tell you very honestly that we absolutely would have gone to ground if one man had not been ridiculously dedicated and ruthlessly persistent. The man who has been named captain of the IEO, a man I hope I can call my friend. Huw Mostyn took three flights to meet with me last year, when the IEO, as yet unnamed, was about to become very expensive scrap metal. He put a figure in front of me and he said, This is what it’s going to take to get this done. I want you to do it.’

He could see Huw in the crowd, back again by the raw bar. He thought the older man might be laughing.

‘I’m ashamed to say that I reacted like a businessman,’ Quatre went on. ‘I told him I had shareholders to answer to. A board of impatient directors. I had a lot of people to whom I was responsible and I couldn’t make a top-down directive like that.’ He shrugged, though the audience wouldn’t know he was only imitating Mostyn. ‘Huw could have yelled at me. He could have talked at me for days, giving me every reason for supporting the project through the tough times. He could have offered my company incentives. All he actually offered me was a round trip on a submarine.’

His feet were starting to hurt, but his audience was listening with every appearance of enjoying the story. He tried to lean a little, subtly, and propped himself on an elbow.

‘He took me to the Galapagos Rift. I’ve spent– a definite minimum of time on open water. None beneath it. It was the first time I had ever seen the Rose Garden Junior hydrothermal vent. I could not believe that life like that could exist. The black corals– the tubeworms on the vent sites. The mussels and clams growing like lace along on pillow lava. It was– it was so breathtaking. I remember staring with my mouth open and thinking– this is proof of Allah’s existence, bless His name.’ Despite himself, his throat felt tight, and he gave himself a breath to speak normally. ‘Those were the most beautiful and amazing hours of my life. I made that top-down directive as soon as we surfaced.

‘It’s been nearly a year between that day and tonight. Tomorrow at 0748 we launch the largest ship on the longest mission of exploration in Earth’s history. We have five decks of scientific laboratories, cutting-edge communications and research equipment, three deep-submergence vehicles designed specifically for this ship, roving wireless satellites which will broadcast video and sonar feed. But what I find most wonderful about this ship is that there is not a single weapon in its specifications. This ship, ladies and gentlemen, is a ship of peace. We wouldn’t have been able to build this ship ten years ago. Not even five. But it gives me hope and renews my faith that this year, we have a ship dedicated solely to discovering the mysterious and the unknown, not the threatening or subversive or dangerous.’

He looked again at his watch during a wave of spontaneous applause and some lusty cheers. He’d been talking for about a half an hour. His throat was dry. A glass of water sat on the top shelf beneath the board of the podium, but he made it a policy to avoid open containers sitting in public access.

He came to his conclusion for the crowd. ‘We’re here to celebrate something unique,’ he said. ‘If it’s as successful as I expect it to be, it won’t be unique for long. I hope all of you will track our progress in the coming year. We will broadcast live every month so that all the world and the colonies can share in our discoveries. This is a universal enterprise. It will be the making of a universal history. I wanted to end by quoting American president John Kennedy. In AD 1962 he said, ‘All of us have in our blood the same exact percentage of salt that exists in the ocean, and therefore we have salt in our blood, our sweat, and our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea– whether to sail or to watch it– we are going back from whence we came.’ Good night, and thank you.’ He pressed his hand to his chest and bowed slightly, and left the podium to louder applause than he’d had when he started. He found he was sweating, and his heart was beating hard and fast. He’d been more anxious than he realised.

He put on his best smile, and plunged back into the crowd with every intention of getting another flute of champagne, schedule be damned.


	4. Four

The party had died down perhaps an hour ago. The music still played, though quietly, now, and the lights still burned brightly, but the crowd had shrunk when he wasn’t watching. The sand was cool and damp under his bare feet, and he was fighting the temptation to drop his heavy shoes and consign them to the briny deep. The champagne-buzz he’d been working on earlier had disappeared by now, and he was content to enjoy the night and the stars.

He saw the body walking toward him along the surf and thought from the shoulders it might be Ehrlich. But she didn’t walk like this person, and as they came closer, Quatre surmised it was a man, anyway. He slowed his own pace to a loose amble, allowing whoever it was to catch up to him.

It was the clouds over the moon parting momentarily that showed him the face of his visitor. It was Trowa.

When they stood facing each other, Quatre said, ‘I didn’t know you were here tonight.’

‘I wanted to catch your speech.’

Trowa was barefoot like himself, his strong calves sandy under the cuffs of his trousers. He wore a nice suit, one Quatre had never seen before. It had an Oriental collar, open now to show a long sliver of chest. His hair was the same as ever, a moon-bleached fall of blackness over half his face. His mouth looked sculpted of marble.

‘How was it?’ Quatre asked.

‘Like all your speeches. Passionate. Moving.’ Trowa lifted one shoulder, and a large shoe twisted and swung along his chest, tied there by a black lace. ‘You don’t ever make notes, do you.’

‘I’ve always thought it was better to speak from the heart.’

Trowa finally looked away, out over the waves. ‘You rambled a little in the middle.’

He’d known that, but it still stung a little. ‘I had a lot of time to fill,’ he said, trying for a light tone. ‘They lost a speaker last-minute.’

An unreadable eye came back to rest on him. ‘Hard to believe you’ll be gone for nine months.’

‘Not really _gone_ , gone.’

He didn’t move, but suddenly Trowa seemed to be standing much closer to him. Trowa stood nearly a head taller than him, and Quatre found himself having to look up the distance.

‘Maybe you can give me a tour of your boat?’ Trowa said.

Quatre understood what he was really asking. It took a moment to find his tongue. ‘I hadn’t intended to board until the morning. The crew are busy running a final diagnostic. My presence would just disrupt that.’

‘We could sneak on.’ He said it without a discernable expression, but his voice was low and suggestive. Quatre felt his face heat.

‘Why don’t we just go back to my hotel,’ he corrected gently. ‘I have to check out anyway. I was going to get a few hours sleep and leave early in the morning.’

This time he saw the step that brought them chest to chest. A broad hand smoothed down the line of his spine, raising shivers in its wake, and settled low on his waist.

‘Gone enough,’ Trowa said.

Like it didn’t matter that it had been nearly five months since he’d seen Trowa last. Longer since they’d slept together. Without a note or call– from Trowa, at least. He’d had two from Trowa’s secretary and one from Wufei when Wufei had picked up Trowa’s mail for six weeks.

Gone enough. That was saying something.

‘Come back to the hotel,’ Quatre murmured.

Trowa’s fingers squeezed, then let him go. ‘I think you lost your sense of adventure,’ he answered. ‘It would be like old times. Trying to keep quiet... a tiny cabin in enemy territory. Silence and secrecy.’

‘I can’t imagine what’s got into me,’ Quatre said drily. ‘Old times or not, Trowa, I want to sleep on a soft bed sometime tonight and eat a good breakfast in the morning, all courtesy of a place I’m already paying for anyway.’ He reached, this time, to part the linen Oriental collar and touch a patch of curly chest hair that dipped down toward a smooth sternum. ‘So are you coming?’

Their trek back to the hotel was silent, interrupted only by staff crossing from the deck back to the service entrances. The music was off now, the guests dispersed. The lobby was empty of all but the maitre d’hotel. Quatre stopped Trowa with a soft touch, and led him to the front desk. As he drew near, he saw it was Mariah, the woman who had handled most of his schedule. They were both smiling when he came to a halt before her mahogany station.

‘Mr Winner,’ she greeted him warmly. ‘May I arrange a wake-up call for you tomorrow?’

‘Five should be fine,’ he decided, not letting himself look at Trowa. ‘If you could arrange a small breakfast.’

‘Certainly.’ She typed quickly on her computer, then looked up at him with her smile growing less professional and more friendly. ‘Anything else, sir?’

‘I’d like to settle my account tonight, actually,’ Quatre told her, tugging his diary from the inside pocket of his waistcoat. Mariah immediately printed his bill, and set it before him with a pen from her own lapel. Quatre signed where appropriate, and added a considerable tip to be spread among the staff. That completed, he removed a number of small envelopes from the diary, one with Mariah’s name sitting atop the pile. ‘Please see that these are distributed,’ he asked her. ‘There are several without names at the bottom, because I’d like everyone who had a hand in my stay to receive one, even if I didn’t meet them. Particularly the staff who cleaned my suite– they were wonderful.’

Her large smile lit her face. ‘Mr Winner, how kind! I know how everyone will appreciate your thoughtfulness.’ She smoothed a hand over the envelopes and looked up at him again. ‘Please come stay with us again,’ she added firmly. ‘We will be poorer without you.’

‘I believe her,’ Trowa murmured, as they rode the lift to the sixth floor. ‘You must have tossed away six or seven grand on this place.’

‘It’s my money to spend,’ Quatre replied easily. ‘And I’ve certainly stayed in places much worse than this. Why not reward them?’

‘With thank-you notes?’

‘It’s an acceptable way of showing thanks,’ he said, as they reached his floor. He led them into the short hallway, now dimmed for the night into a golden glow of mirrors and flowers. His door opened at the touch of his key to the pad. ‘Mariah, for instance, was a terrific help. She’s got a postgraduate degree in business, but when she divorced her husband she was passed for promotion and she’s been stuck in middle management. A word or two from someone like me can put her back on the fast-track. She’s outgoing, efficient, and competent.’

‘And it’s your job to see that that happens?’ Trowa tossed his coat over a wing-back chair, never so much as glancing about the sitting room, leaving Quatre to wonder if he’d already been inside it. The thought of Trowa sneaking about his private space bothered him for a moment, but he deliberately ignored it, and stripped his sandals onto the carpet.

‘I have the power to make it happen,’ he responded, only missing one beat. ‘I try to use the power wisely, but the point is to use it. It doesn’t do anybody any good tucked away in my pocket all day long.’

When he turned to face Trowa, he found a familiar expression waiting for him in the single visible eye, in the half-curve of full lips. Amusement. The sort of amusement one had when faced with children saying silly things.

Quatre sighed, and dropped his jubbah over the settee. ‘Are you here to seduce me or not?’ he asked.

Trowa’s teeth flashed white and straight in a wonderful, rare smile. ‘Show me the bedroom.’

The sheets had been turned down, a light quilt artfully draped over the left corner. The mints were on a saucer on the bedside table, not the pillows. His packed suitcase and duffle rested on racks under the window; the shutters were open to the cool Spanish breeze. The lace curtains waved gently.

Trowa turned off the overhead lamp, and took hold of Quatre’s shoulders from behind. A moment later, warm, open lips pressed against the back of Quatre’s neck. He shivered at the brush of a tongue.

‘I can’t believe I ever forget how amazing you are,’ Trowa whispered against the shell of his ear.

He grinned at the window. ‘Me neither,’ he answered, and turned into Trowa’s arms.

They slept for a little after, and Quatre woke into a dark room to the feeling of Trowa’s breath against his thighs. He gasped when sloppy heat and a wriggling tongue enveloped him, a fist gripping him at the base. He sought blindly for Trowa’s head, found the sheet, and struggled to throw it aside. Trowa’s hair was coarse and thick under his palms. He broke a sweat when a callused thumb wormed against his backside.

‘You’re so tight,’ Trowa broke away to murmur. ‘You don’t sleep with anyone else, do you?’

He had to remind himself to breathe, with the thumb demanding all his concentration. ‘You had to ask that?’

‘You could. I wouldn’t mind.’ Trowa licked delicately along his length, giving him a minute of singular attention.

‘Who would I sleep with, Trowa? My work day isn’t a revolving door for dates.’

‘Some flunky. A handsome lawyer.’ Trowa swallowed him hard and fast, released him just as suddenly. ‘I always thought Duo had a thing for you.’

That woke him up. ‘I hate it when you do that,’ he said. ‘Stop trying to put obstacles in front of my friendships.’

Trowa straightened his hand and pushed deep. Quatre saw fuzzy light for a moment. ‘I’m just saying.’

He’d never quite asked, wasn’t sure he wanted to know, if Trowa slept with other people. They didn’t use protection. He’d never felt right asking that, either, and it was a thin hope that Trowa would respect him enough to get tested. Or warn him if he needed to. He said, ‘There’s no-one else as long as there’s you.’

Trowa’s lips explored him again. ‘I know,’ they answered. ‘You were always sweet like that.’ And brought him to climax again.

He was tired. He had to get up in an hour, and he had the hollow feeling of being dehydrated. But post-orgasm was sleepy and pleasant, and Trowa draped over him like a big cat.

‘I’m not sweet,’ Quatre remembered to say. ‘I love you.’

‘I know you think you do,’ Trowa replied. Amused. Kissed the back of his neck, the favourite spot, and added, ‘Go to sleep while you still can.’

But he woke before the wake-up call came, convinced he’d sleep through it, and dragged himself into the shower without bothering to turn on any of the lights. He’d only gotten as far as shampoo when Trowa joined him, disgustingly alert, if quiet. He washed Quatre with the nubby cloth from the rack, slipping a finger into him again when he turned to face the spray. Quatre thought he’d be sore later, but Trowa seemed content with just the gesture of ownership.

‘Maybe I’ll help you bring your stuff on board?’ Trowa said.

Quatre pulled away, and turned to face his lover. It was almost pitch-black in the bathroom, but he could see the glint of Trowa’s eyes and slick hair, the smooth face so close to his. Not for the first time, he wished he knew how to decode the almost-expressions he found there. He said, ‘Why are you trying so hard to get on my ship, Barton?’

But to his surprise Trowa didn’t meet his look. The taller man stopped touching him, then sighed and brushed a finger over his jaw. ‘I was trying to show an interest,’ he explained awkwardly, in an odd, lame tone. ‘You talked about this thing for months and I never really listened. I guess... last night I realised how much this actually means to you. This is something you really care about.’ He lifted his shoulders, and let them fall. ‘Okay?’

His suspicions faded into amazement. ‘You really came here just to see me?’

Trowa’s mouth turned down in a little scowl. ‘You make it sound–‘

‘Like you care?’

It hung there between them. Then Trowa huffed out a breath, and wrapped a taut arm around Quatre, pulling him close and holding him there firmly. Steam eddied about them in the dark. Quatre took that as the only answer he was likely to get, and pressed his face into Trowa’s shoulder to hide his grin.

‘Okay,’ he whispered.

 

**

 

‘Mr Winner,’ Mostyn greeted him, bright-eyed and grinning despite the fact that outside the wide windows of the bridge, it was only just beginning to brighten along the horizon line. ‘And this is?’

‘Trowa Barton,’ Quatre introduced them, gesturing vaguely as Mostyn leaned across a console to grip Trowa’s hand in a gruff shake. ‘Trowa is the senior security analyst at NM-B Continuous Data Protection,’ he added.

‘Security analyst?’ Mostyn repeated, real interest sparking in his eyes. ‘I lobbied for NM-B,’ he added to Trowa. ‘I’ve been very impressed with your work. Unfortunately, it was a government contract.’

‘I was disappointed when we lost that bid,’ Trowa agreed courteously, winning his hand back. ‘It would have been an engaging project, designing for your ship’s network.’

Mostyn’s ever-present grin turned crooked. ‘I’m almost afraid to ask how Unilyd measures up, in your opinion.’

‘Considering how many of my employees were stolen away to Unilyd, I’d say very well,’ Trowa answered drily. ‘Half of my best engineers and two designers I recruited out of university myself. You’re well protected.’

‘I love the world of corporate backstabbing,’ Mostyn laughed. ‘I imagine Quatre could tell us stories to turn our ears blue.’ He stepped back, signaling an end to the discussion. ‘Have you had a tour of the bridge, Mr Barton?’

‘Not yet.’

‘O’Callaghan,’ Mostyn called, and a young man in blue polo stood up from his console. ‘Stephan O’Callaghan,’ Mostyn explained, gesturing the man over. ‘Mate on this voyage. Give ‘em the tour, son, and then get the extra off the ship so we can launch.’ He winked at Quatre and Trowa, and turned back to his business.

O’Callaghan and Quatre had met before. Quatre performed brief introductions again, and then O’Callaghan began to point out features of the bridge. ‘We use GPS Navtrac and a Loran navigator,’ he explained. ‘Piloting is shared between the captain and myself. Our Chief Mate, seated there with the Notre Dame cap, is Suki Yamamoto. She’s a die-hard fan.’ He named the rest of the crew on the bridge, Darrius Baptiste, the lead seaman, and Jiva Traore, the second seaman. He described the function of the consoles briefly, not noticing that both men were more than familiar with bridge equipment. Quatre, accustomed to paying polite attention, nodded and added commentary at the right moments, allowing Trowa to be customarily silent. Their ‘tour’ took all of three minutes, and then O’Callaghan excused himself to his console. Relatively alone in a corner of the bridge, Quatre faced his lover, and found him already looking.

‘Guess this is it,’ Quatre told Trowa.

‘Guess so.’ Trowa nodded toward the door, and they slipped outside to the narrow wheelhouse walkway. The dawn air was chilly, and Quatre suppressed a shiver as goosebumps appeared on his bare arms. He hugged himself.

Trowa’s fingers brushed his chin, then dropped back to his side. ‘You’ll fit in. You always do.’

‘I know.’ He made himself smile. ‘You know, I wouldn’t have missed you so bad if you hadn’t shown up last night.’

‘I’m not even gone yet.’ Trowa’s eyes seemed to be saying significant things; at least, it was pleasant to imagine they were. ‘Maybe I’ll see you again when you make landfall.’

‘I’ll let you know our progress.’ He always did. Trowa rarely made use of Quatre’s little reminders, but Quatre hadn’t yet convinced himself to stop sending them. ‘You better disembark. They really want to get out of here.’

Trowa nodded. He leaned down, touching his lips to the top of Quatre’s ear, making him shiver again. He said nothing else, and Quatre knew better than to call good-bye as he watched Trowa climb down the ladder and off across the deck.

Mostyn poked his head out the door, catching Quatre’s attention away from Trowa’s retreat. ‘Would you like to join us on the bridge for launch?’ he asked.

Quatre turned to look at him, and grinned himself. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll stay on deck. I want to have my first ocean sunrise outside.’

The captain’s smile deepened. ‘Welcome aboard, Quatre.’

 

**

 

Trowa ordered another breakfast for himself at his own hotel, one farther from the Dorada Marina and the departing ship than Quatre’s, but significantly more suited to Trowa’s purposes. The Husa I’lla provided him with private business facilities, but better yet, operated under his own company’s security systems, albeit not the most comprehensive package he offered. By eight in the morning he was seated in an empty conference room with his own laptop, a channel he knew beyond doubt was secure, and a mixto con huevo with a side of chocolate-drizzled churros.

He keyed a very private number, and sat back to wait.

It took time. He let the call sit, his screen filled with the green and grey logo of his company, a small caption keeping track of signal repeats. He’d nearly finished the mixto when a click told him his call had been accepted, and secured. He wiped his fingers quickly, and leaned toward the laptop just as a familiar face replaced the logo.

‘Target has launched,’ he said shortly.

Chang Wufei nodded once. His private office at Preventers HQ, an impersonal space absolutely without clutter, was the backdrop to his aesthetic head and shoulders, the crisp collar of his uniform and the sleek lines of his black hair. _‘As anticipated?’_

Trowa leaned back, dropping his elbows onto the arms of his plush leather chair. ‘They had stronger security than I’d hoped. I wasn’t able to make an amphibious approach.’ It had probably been Quatre’s influence that produced the armed and well-trained guards who had observed a strict perimetre about the ship. Trowa had determined very quickly that it wasn’t worth attempting to penetrate it, however easy it might have been. He had, after all, had a fall-back plan. ‘I got onboard. I planted a bug on the bridge.’

 _‘Just one?’_ Wufei did not look pleased.

‘One is better than none,’ Trowa pointed out. He reached past his laptop, picking up an object he had been deliberately ignoring since he had set it there. He contemplated it a moment before bringing it to the screen for Wufei to see.

 _‘Pills,’_ Wufei said. _‘Pills are your fallback?’_

‘Not my pills.’ He shook the bottle, eliciting a clacking noise, and settled back in the chair, rubbing his thumb along the ridge of the cap. ‘I replaced them with the placebos. According to our good doctor, we’ve got approximately three weeks.’

Wufei’s face had settled into deeply unhappy lines. _‘I’m still not convinced this is our best course,’_ he snapped. _‘Quatre is a friend and an honourable man.’_

‘Which is why he’ll never suspect I’ve tampered with his medication.’ Trowa put the bottle back on the table, determined not to look at it. ‘He’s taken them all his life. He’ll have to leave the ship to get more, once he realises the batch he has isn’t working. We agreed that getting him off the ship before we move was paramount. Given that you're the one who convinced him to get on the damn thing in the first place.’

_‘You'd harm him? Your own lover?’_

‘It’s just a heart condition,’ Trowa dismissed it. ‘You read his files. It’s mild enough to be controlled by medication. He won’t be in any danger. He may not be comfortable, but I remind you that we agreed. This is an easy way of getting him off the ship. We can be ready in two weeks.’ He cut off any further protest by moving on. ‘Inform your contacts. I’ll take care of our client.’

It was a visible struggle. But before too many seconds had slipped away, Wufei nodded his acceptance.

‘Chang,’ Trowa added. ‘This was a successful first phase. The early victories will be small, but they are still victories.’

He didn’t receive affirmation this time, but Wufei’s shoulders seemed to straighten. A moment later, the Preventer cut their connection, and Trowa’s screen returned to the logo.

Trowa found he had picked up the pill bottle again. He read the label, one he had easily extracted from the database of Quatre’s primary physician and replicated in his own office in Brussels. Propanolol, 90mg. One tablet twice daily.

Quatre would take the placebos until he started feeling drained and sore. He might have nightmares, but nightmares were old friends to Gundam pilots. The symptoms of his heart condition would return. Chest pain, palpitations. Headaches and weakness. But Quatre had lived with that all his life too, and always maintained that the condition was tolerable. He laughed about it when he forgot to take his medication.

Trowa stuffed the bottle into his trousers pocket, and put it out of his mind. He queued a new programme on his laptop, and opened a connection between himself and the ship sailing out of Dorada. Information began to scroll across his screen, the rate increasing as Trowa cautiously expanded the range of his bug, creating a network of the GTEK serial multi-port interface, the differential GPS and gyro. He forgot about the churros as he settled in to read.


	5. Five

‘We’re not talking mandatory maximums here,’ Quatre said, turning around and sticking his foot over the edge, fumbling blindly for the first rung on the ladder. He finally caught it, and began his descent to B Deck. He continued to speak, heedless of the confused look he caught from Dmitri Rosacis, one of the marine techs. ‘Lowering the sales multiplier to three-seven put too much pressure on our reps in the field. We threw them into sales-based bonuses last year to cover a bad quarter and it’s not WEI’s policy to fluff profits by punishing its employees. Well, I don’t agree. Target earnings don’t exist to create unreasonable growth expectations. Sixty-eight million was achievable, eighty isn’t.’ He hit the deck, and had to go fifteen feet to the left to get the ladder to C Deck. He began the climb again. ‘I’m not cutting from the bottom. This smells like bad leadership. I’m not letting go two engineers making seventy thousand a year when I can get rid of a VP making three-fifty and eliminate the source of the problem.’

He landed on C Deck, and ducked inside, the automatic door shutting behind him. Out of the sunlight, his skin began to tingle, meaning he’d probably been burned, definitely across the shoulders. He adjusted the microphone over his ear, and paused to glance up the metallic corridor to get his bearings. He headed to his right. ‘That’s the joy of being in charge, isn’t it?’ he retorted, lifting a hand to greet one of the graduate students passing by with a shallow bowl filled with sea water and coral samples. He got another look, but ignored it. ‘No, put him through to me. I have time after three. Three thirty. No, I agree that ambition can be a virtue. I’m not trying to put the fear of God into anyone. I think my attitude has been remarkably consistent. I put my employees first.’

He passed the dry lab before he realised he had, and had to backtrack. Ehrlich, the woman he’d actually been looking for, was there, slumped in front of the underway data systems. She didn’t look up at him when he entered, but one of the researchers quietly excused herself from the room. Quatre moved aside to let her pass, not noticing her jump when he said, ‘We’re not in an economic boom!’

He found himself one of the rolling stools and shoved it toward Ehrlich. She glanced up at him when he sat beside her; she looked good, slim but muscled in a dark blue bathing suit, her paprika hair in a tail low on the neck. Quatre himself wore only a pair of lycra trunks. The sun shone brightly from the starboard side ports. He put a hand over the microphone and in a low voice told her, ‘I need to talk to you. I’m sorry to interrupt.’

In his ear, Badra demanded, _‘Are you ignoring me? I said this isn’t the time to get conservative.’_

He moved his hand and leaned away from Ehrlich. ‘I believe I’m trying to hold stable. Or I would have been except that now we’ve got production up, profit halved, and there’s not enough sheet metal in the colonies to get us through all the sales.’

 _‘All right,’_ she groused. _‘You’ll get that call from Bagot, three thirty on the dot if I have to flog him.’_

‘That’s all I ask,’ he told her. ‘I have to go. I’m in a meeting.’ He winked at Ehrlich, whose face didn’t remotely acknowledge his joke. ‘Good-bye.’ He slipped off the earpiece and turned it off, rubbing the juncture of cartilage where it ached. ‘Sorry,’ he told Ehrlich. ‘The bad calls always last forever.’

She turned back to her screen. ‘You’re going to walk into a wall one day when you’re on that thing.’

‘Or fall off the boat.’ Quatre nodded toward the three flat screens that comprised the UDS. He rested an elbow on the counter that held it. ‘What are you working on?’

Her eyes didn’t lift from the keyboard. ‘Mapping the fifty-foot coral mound from yesterday. Trying to make a half-way decent bathymetric image.’

There was a stack of fathometre transects of the South Sandwich Trench lying beside the computer. Quatre lifted them and leafed through. He said, ‘I want you to do the first broadcast.’

The clicking of the keys stopped. Ehrlich rested her pointer fingers where they had halted, and her ponytail swung gently across her back as she turned her head toward him.

Quatre set the printouts back in their spot. He met her gaze calmly.

She said, ‘What in all hell convinces you I can talk to children?’

He grinned at that. ‘You’re the Chief Biologist,’ he reminded her. ‘You can certainly order one of the graduate students to help you, but, for our first broadcast, I think it would make the right impression to introduce the best we have on board.’

Her mouth, never smiling, dipped into a frown. ‘Do you ever stop thinking about what you can get out of people?’

‘I’ll pretend you meant that in a nice way.’

She finally faced him. ‘You didn’t come all the way down to the dry lab to convince me to go on live. What do you want?’

Quatre idly scratched his chest, then dropped his hand with a sigh. ‘I have a favour to ask you.’

‘I’m sort of busy.’

‘It’s an easy favour.’

‘Really?’

‘I have no idea,’ he admitted. ‘I have a nephew who’s interested in marine biology. I thought I might convince you to recommend the best programmes. As an insider.’

Ehrlich lifted an eyebrow. ‘How old is this nephew?’

‘Twenty-seven,’ Quatre said. ‘He’s just sold his business. He says he wants to do something productive.’

She blinked. ‘All right,’ she agreed after a moment. ‘I guess I can do that. Does he have any background in science?’

‘Double honours in chemistry and modern languages as an undergraduate,’ Quatre recalled. ‘He’s had a little trouble finding what he’s good at.’

She leaned back on her stool, her expression darkening. ‘Are you asking me to play guidance counselor to this grown-ass adult? Why not just hand him some cash and send him to art school? Why me?’

‘Because,’ Quatre said, smiling broadly. ‘I’m sitting in front of the Chief Biologist of the premier oceanic exploration team in the ESA. Who else am I going to ask?’ He stood, rolling the stool back to the table where he’d gotten it. ‘Suki’s quarters tonight, for the game. It’s not too late to join the pool for Notre Dame. Stephan bet lobster dinner for the entire crew.’

He was almost at the door when her voice stopped him. He turned back to watch her say to the UDS, ‘You’re not just "one of the guys," you know.’

He wasn’t sure how to answer that. ‘I sort of thought I was,’ he said at last. ‘No?’

After a moment, she swivelled her stool to face him. ‘No. You try hard, but you’re the outsider.’

‘This colonial business?’ he demanded. ‘I’m not the only one on the ship. Louis Timmins is from L1. Nishi Bheruhmal is from L3.’

‘It’s because you bought the damn ship,’ she snapped. ‘It’s because you’re always trying to _do_ things for people. Like everything is a transaction! Because you can’t sit through a meal without having to answer five calls. Because half the news coverage we get for this project is about your involvement.’

His shoulders were tense and tight, and he made a conscious effort to relax them, to keep his hands immobile at his sides. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you resented me,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything about that.’

She made a contemptuous noise. Stung, he glared at her, but she turned her back on him. His gut told him to leave the room before it got worse, but his head and feet weren’t listening. He was back across the room before he knew it, in her space where she couldn’t dismiss him. He kept his voice low, but he couldn’t keep the heat out of it.

‘You seem to be under the impression that I’m some kind of– of sleazy, lazy rich boy,’ he said. ‘I do have a lot of money, that’s true. I earned most of it, but I don’t think that’s your problem. Your problem is that I don’t give it all away and live like a hermit. That I didn’t devote my life to doing the hard research for the small rewards and the esteem of my peers, like you did. That’s the basis of your objections to me, isn’t it? Would I upset you less if I were a– a poet, or something? Anything but someone who runs a business for profit?’

She didn’t meet his eyes until the last word. When she did, hers looked like blue steel.

‘My grandfather built WEI out of a few government contracts,’ he told her. ‘He gave it to my father five times the size it was when it was created. My father worked his entire life to make it even bigger. So have I.’

‘Good for you,’ she sneered. ‘I’m surprised they haven’t nominated you for a Nobel. It’s so _generous_ of you to be interested in science, so _kind_ of you to donate to charities. You talk a big game about putting the people first, but it’s all corporate bullshit!’

‘You don’t understand the first thing about me or my motives,’ he corrected her hotly. ‘You think I talk a big game? My father put me in charge of my first company when I was thirteen. Asteroid mining. In the first quarter I almost ran it into the ground. The trustees wanted to cut two hundred jobs. Well, my father made me do it personally. Two hundred people, all losing their livelihood because of my mistakes. That’s what I think about when I try to "do things" for people. I think about the families I destroyed when I lost those jobs. I think about the miners going home and having to tell their children that it’ll be okay, somehow.’

She was biting her lip when he made himself stop. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, lower than him and more strained. ‘I didn’t know that.’

He looked her, thinking not for the first time that she was every doubt he’d ever had about himself made into a walking accusation. ‘Do you know how many people WEI employs currently?’ he asked her. ‘In the colonies, it’s about two and a half million people. On Earth, the figure is closer to three. That makes me personally responsible to five and a half million people. Some of them are scientists, some of them are lawyers, and some of them are probably corrupt managers trying to line their own pockets. But most of them are earning fifteen or twenty an hour, two-and-three-job people like those miners. I think it ought to be easier and better for them and I spend most of my day trying to make it that way, but I don’t see how it gets any better if I sell all my worldly possessions, give up my titles and move into a cardboard box under the motorway. If I’m not doing it, someone who cares less might, and I don’t find that an acceptable solution.’

Ehrlich was struggling with it. ‘I just–‘ She pushed to her feet, glaring at him when he didn’t move back. ‘I just feel like you’ve got a hand in everything, and everything new you look at you start trying to fit into your grand scheme. I can’t move on this ship without being reminded of something you did to it. For it. Whatever. And it kills me to think that you have all of it because you were born into it!’

‘Designed,’ he said flatly. ‘Actually.’

Her mouth closed hard.

‘Didn’t know that either,’ he guessed. ‘You think I don’t have days where I resent it too? There was never going to be a way for me to choose out.’

He hadn’t meant to say that. It was more personal than he wanted to be with this woman who still, after four weeks of close acquaintance, had made no effort to be friendly, to be understanding, to welcome his presence in any way. He’d had absolutely no intention of revealing his secret shame, a confession he had never even made to his family.

‘Forget it,’ he made himself say, as politely as possible. ‘You’ve got a right to your feelings. I’m sorry if I made it sound like I didn’t respect that.’ His lips were dry, and he licked them. ‘And forget about the thing with my nephew. He can do the research on his own.’ He pulled himself together, and nodded his good-bye. He made to leave, realised he’d left his earpiece on the counter, and went back for it. He couldn’t quite look at Ehrlich as he passed her a second time. He had never been more grateful for the existence of a door than when he passed through the one closing him off from the dry lab.

He turned the corner, and ran head-on into Suki. She grinned at him, reaching up to wiggle her cap suggestively. ‘Going to be a killer game tonight!’ she cheered.

He found a grin somewhere, and plastered it on. ‘I’m sure it will be,’ he replied. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but something’s come up. I don’t think I’ll make it to the game.’

Her face fell. ‘Really? Quatre, that’s awful.’

‘You’ll never even notice I’m gone,’ he assured her. He touched her elbow in apology, and awkwardly manouevred them about so he could continue down the corridor. ‘I can’t wait to hear how it goes. Don’t let anyone surprise me!’

‘Well, try to make it if you can,’ she called after him. He waved without looking back, and dodged for the stairwell down to the crew cabins. He managed to avoid meeting anyone else between the stairs and his own bunk, threw the door closed, and stood staring at it for a long time.

Not one of the guys. There was going to be a day, Quatre thought, staring at his blank wood-paneled walls, when comments like that didn’t shrivel him down to the lonely little boy he’d once been. It was clearly a long way off.

He thought about calling Duo or Wufei, maybe even Trowa, and remembered he had to stay open for three thirty. He put himself down for a short nap, instead, and wondered why he felt so tired suddenly. He fell asleep listening to his own pulse.

He was up again and working on the language of a contract for a business he was negotiating to buy. He’d gotten down to the minutia of transferred debts, and the words and numbers were swimming before his eyes. It was well past midnight, and the empty top deck was calling him, though he was trying very hard not to listen.

He reached too quickly for his water glass, and gasped when he felt like he’d been stabbed in the chest. The pain was so sudden that it brought tears to his eyes, but it was gone only seconds later. His heart had barely had time to react to the onslaught, and didn’t even speed its beating.

He hadn’t had an attack like that in years. ‘It must be anxiety,’ he said aloud, needing to hear the innocuous reasoning. He made sure he took his pill that night, worried that he couldn’t remember whether he’d done so the night before. He went to his bed without looking at the contract again, and promised to schedule himself more time away from business.


	6. Six

Trowa propped his rake against the thick trunk of the willow, and unhooked the pruning shears from his tool belt. He climbed his little step ladder, and set to work on a particularly hoary branch. He paused to wipe sweat from his forehead, then crammed his cap low over his sunglasses.

He was aware that he had company long before he acknowledged it. He let a cut twig fall nearly on top of the small girl who had joined him under the tree, and sensed her irritation before he looked down and ‘happened’ to see her there. He descended the ladder, locking the shears and hooking them back into his belt, and nodded to her.

The young lady folded her hands in her lap, the kind of consciously elegant gesture common to aristocratic matrons, not ten year old girls. Her round, bright eyes rested unblinking on his face. She sat, maturely composed, in her wheelchair as if it were a banquet table, and he a visiting diplomat, not posing as the gardener.

‘Mr Barton,’ she said, only a trace of irony audible in her tone. ‘I appreciate you finding the time to visit me.’

‘I am very rarely interested in exchanging pleasantries,’ he told her flatly. He used the rake to gather the twigs he’d cut, and crouched to stuff the small pile into his waste bag. He paid her little mind, or at least did not appear to, as he went about his work. ‘I assume you’ve received the most recent information,’ he added after a minute.

She was frostier this time, though he didn’t bother to match her voice to her expression. ‘I have reviewed it. I confess the implementation is not what I had hoped, given our earlier conversations.’

‘I told you exactly how I was going to do it, and that’s what I’ve done,’ he disagreed. He tied off the bag and tossed it into the nearby wheelbarrow, removing the clippers from his belt and settling at the roots of the willow to work on the grass he hadn’t been able to reach with the mower. ‘This is Stage One. You can’t start a war overnight.’

Her silence was his answer. He reached the wheel of her chair, and waited; she made him wait longer, before she unlocked her brakes and backed up several feet. He didn’t look up or thank her as he attended to the long grass where her chair had sat.

She said, ‘I am reluctant to leave so much of the preparation in your hands. I have no way of personally ensuring the loyalty of our people. No way of judging for myself our progress.’ Her hands shifted along the wheels of the chair, before she forced them into stillness on the white lap of her skirt. ‘They keep me confined in this prison like a dangerous beast,’ she murmured bitterly.

‘Be glad they didn’t execute you. I would have.’ He’d gone all the way around the tree, and stretched, releasing cramped muscles in his back. ‘You’ll be watched for the rest of your life.’

‘For the rest of theirs,’ she countered, and he did look at her this time. Her sea-blue eyes weren’t on him, but looking into some bloody future. Her slender child’s hands were clenched and white-knuckled. There was a fever in the set of her shoulders.

‘Yes,’ he said. He stood still, waiting more patiently now for her attention to return to him. When it did, he inclined his head to her. ‘It will be difficult for me to see you again,’ he told her. ‘For further communication you should rely on Chang.’

She turned her head up to look at him. ‘Perhaps I should find it strange to have two Gundam pilots in my flock again,’ she said. She pursed her small lips. ‘But men who are bred for battle must go where soldiers are appreciated.’

That settled hard and heavy in his gut, and he wished it hadn’t. ‘Yes,’ he found himself repeating. ‘I suppose we must.’

She smiled for the first time since Wufei had introduced them four months earlier. ‘We will give them such a war,’ she whispered.

He watched Mariemaia Khushrenada roll her chair away from him, back onto the cobbled garden path. She never so much as glanced away from her determined path. It was a moment before he shook himself awake, and grasped the handles of his wheelbarrow.

An hour later, he dropped his fake ID, spirit-gummed moustache, cap and coveralls into an empty oil drum outside the ESA maximum security compound and its single prisoner. He followed it all with a match, and left when he was sure he’d burned it all to cinders.

 

**

 

It was quite early, not much past dawn when Quatre let himself onto the bridge. They were doing nothing more taxing than maintaining position over the Nova Scotia reef forest, surveying the effects of a century of carefully protected regrowth. The submersible had been going out since their arrival, and Quatre had joined a group of divers the day before, operating an underwater video line so the scientists could do the real work. Any time the science crew was busy, however, the ship’s crew was far less likely to be. Only O’Callaghan and Traore were on for the morning shift, and Traore was slumped low in his chair with his bare feet propped on his console. Quatre murmured a sleepy hello, and helped himself to the coffee brewing in the hardware cabinet.

O’Callaghan grinned at him when he took a seat nearby, planning to gaze out the forward windows until he woke up all the way. ‘You look like shit,’ the mate told him companionably.

‘Thanks,’ Quatre replied absently. ‘I’ll sign you up for keelhauling later.’

He got a lazy chuckle at that. ‘Not sleeping well?’

‘I think it’s called "under the weather."' Quatre sighed, and sipped his coffee. He shuddered deeply, not having to fake it for effect. ‘How long has this been out?’

‘Tuesday.’

It was Thursday. Quatre shivered again, and tossed the entire cup into the waste bin, achieving a perfect arc and a satisfying swoosh of the flip lip without losing a drop. Not that it made a difference; they could have tarred the deck with it.

‘I heard you’re in the sub today,’ Traore said, raising his head.

‘0940,’ Quatre replied. ‘My first time,’ he added, excited even through his weariness. He’d waited to be sure that everyone else who wanted to go had their chance, not wanting to take opportunities away from any of the students or crew who’d been about the marine business long before he had shown up as the surprise guest. ‘I’ve been instructed to sit very still and not touch anything.’

He got another laugh from both men. They talked a little longer about the upcoming shore leave they were scheduled for in Canada; Traore had family in Quebec, though Quatre wasn’t going to make it any farther than Toronto for a number of delayed meetings. Soon enough, they returned to sleepy silence. They sat that way for nearly an hour, thinking their own thoughts, before Quatre realised something was nagging him.

It took him another ten minutes to voice, and even then, it came out uncertain. ‘Does either of you hear that noise?’

He woke Traore from a light doze. ‘Wha’ noise?’

O’Callaghan listened, then shrugged. ‘No.’

‘It’s... like... a buzz,’ Quatre decided. He stood, then felt foolish. Then decided that since he was already on his feet he might as well search. He moved closer to the row of consoles, not knowing he was frowning. ‘A vibration,’ he clarified a moment later. Maybe a loose coupling.’

‘I don’t hear anything,’ Traore muttered, but he moved his legs when Quatre bent over his station.

Out of sync, Quatre thought, though what was out of sync he couldn’t say. He wandered the length of the bridge, forgetting he looked like an idiot, trying to puzzle his way through the problem. By now he knew the difference in feel between the generators and the engines, the electric current and the surrounding water. A ship, however big, wasn’t all that different from a Gundam, and Quatre had been more than sensitive to every sound and twitch in his Sandrock. The quandry was waking him up nicely, and he snapped his fingers when he remembered he had slipped on the rubber-soled shoes most of them wore when going top-side. He kicked them off, and planted his bare feet flat on the chilly metal floor. Then he went back over his path, pressing his hands against the walls, the counters, the consoles, trying to think with his skin as well as his eyes and ears.

When he slid his fingers along the back edge of the navigations computer, he found the bug. He tried not to show anything in his expression when he turned around again, tried to sound casual when he said, ‘Mr Traore, I need you to get the captain.’

Traore blinked at him. ‘What?’

‘Please tell him it’s important. If he’s still asleep, wake him.’ He said it firmly, but politely and without hurry, the same voice he often used during negotiations. It worked just as well now as it ever had before; the engineer rose, as if not sure he ought to, but he went without argument, disappearing out the door. Quatre waited until he heard the slap of shoes on the ladder and then the deck, and then he looked at O’Callaghan.

Who immediately came to his side. ‘What did you find?’ he demanded.

Quatre showed him how he’d found it, and watched while the mate felt it carefully for himself. When the man’s arm tensed, Quatre stopped him quickly. ‘Don’t disturb it,’ he cautioned.

‘What is it? It’s not a– not a bomb?’

Quatre honestly hadn’t considered that. ‘I think it’s just a bug,’ he said. ‘That’s not the most effective place to stash explosives, and–‘ He reached behind the computer to feel again. ‘It’s connected. One of the ISB ports.’

‘What the hell is it doing?’

‘That’s the question of the hour,’ Quatre muttered. He was saved from answering by the arrival of the captain, a man who did not look pleased to be about early in the morning. O’Callaghan, clearly impressed by the seriousness of the situation, almost snapped out a salute. Quatre straightened as Mostyn joined them. Traore, he noticed, hadn’t returned with the captain.

‘We have a problem,’ Quatre said shortly, and let O’Callaghan explain what they had found.

‘I don’t know how he felt it,’ the mate finished. ‘But it’s right here. It’s a little smaller than palm-size, and it’s live.’

Mostyn let out a big breath. ‘Let’s approach this carefully,’ he said, tying closed his short terrycloth robe with snappy little movements. Quatre had long suspected that Mostyn had a little military in him, and the take-charge attitude seemed to confirm his suspicions. For himself, Quatre attempted to stand exactly the same way he stood most of the time, looking nothing more than a little concerned.

‘Security never detected it,’ he offered diffidently. ‘It’s either a very recent plant or it’s high-quality spyware.’

‘Check the logs,’ Mostyn ordered O’Callaghan. ‘Let’s see if they tell us anything about this.’ Though he really wanted to see the screen, Quatre took care to stay back, only angling himself to get a view as the mate slipped into the chair and began typing. It didn’t take long to see that the logs offered nothing unusual for the morning or night before. As O’Callaghan began to scroll back further, Quatre chewed the inside of his lip, trying to remember his own experience with black-market tech. He was several years out of date, however.

‘There,’ he heard himself blurt suddenly, and realised once again that his subconscious had gone ahead of his forebrain. He pointed rather sheepishly as both crewmen turned on him. ‘1752 hours on the Monday,’ he added. ‘There’s a double time signature.’

‘What does that mean?’ Mostyn asked.

‘Signal overlay,’ he guessed. ‘A piggyback. It looks like the computer caught a little feedback from the secondary connection. It recorded the time from both our end and whoever’s receiving from the bug.’

Two grim faces looked at him. Then Mostyn said, ‘I want this thing unhooked immediately.’

‘Actually,’ Quatre interrupted again, and winced at himself. But Mostyn wore a little smile of understanding, and Quatre returned it. ‘I think we should wait,’ he finished.

‘Why?’ O’Callaghan said. ‘Who knows what it’s doing!’

‘Not us,’ Mostyn answered him, easily catching the train of Quatre’s thoughts. ‘He’s right. Until we know what systems it’s in and what it’s done in there, it’s too risky to pull it out.’ He reached up to rub his moustaches, frowning behind his hand. ‘We could try shutting down the nav,’ he mused aloud.

‘Maybe even a few other systems,’ Quatre agreed. ‘Routine maintenance check. It may not fool whoever’s spying on us, but we ought to at least try.’ He hesitated. ‘I almost hate to bring this up,’ he said, ‘but this is just the only bug we’ve found. There could be a lot more.’

O’Callaghan groaned. ‘Not good.’

‘Keep this to yourself for the time being,’ Mostyn ordered his mate. ‘I’m going to think about what to do here. Leave the thing where it is and don’t let anyone else know about it. I gather Traore wasn’t included in the scavenger hunt?’

‘I don’t think he noticed anything wrong,’ O’Callaghan replied, glowering at the computer. ‘I’ll tell him it wasn’t any of his business anyway. Mum’s the word until you say otherwise, Captain.’

‘Good man.’ Mostyn clapped the younger man on the shoulder, and then turned his eyes on Quatre. ‘And now you and I are going to discuss everything you know about what that thing is,’ he said.

They returned to the captain’s quarters, an L-shaped room with a large port window accessible from the top deck. Quatre found that Mostyn was not overly concerned with neatness, but it was only the work of a moment to clear a chair at a small table before he had a seat, and Mostyn slumped down right on top of two shirts and a swimming suit opposite him. ‘I don’t know much more than what you heard in there,’ Quatre told him, rubbing at the tension tightening the back of his neck.

‘I’m disturbed by the notion that we may be under surveillance,’ Mostyn confessed. ‘There’s a lot of equipment on this ship, and some of it is private technology not yet released to the general public.’

‘I couldn’t tell you why, but somehow this doesn’t strike me as being a case of greed gone criminal,’ Quatre answered. ‘It just... doesn’t fit.’ He glanced up. ‘What’s standard procedure?’

‘Report the incident to the oceanographic admin. They’ll inform someone else– the Security Bureau, probably.’

‘How soon do you have to report?’

‘If I wait much longer, they’ll want to know why.’ Mostyn’s eyes were keen. ‘Why?’

Quatre shrugged, then had to admit his seeming indifference wasn’t sincere. He dropped it immediately. ‘I could make a call. It might get us some information. But it might not.’

Mostyn didn’t answer right away, and when he did, Quatre was half expecting it and half surprised. ‘There are a number of things about you that make me wonder,’ the captain said. ‘You get a look about you, sometimes.’

Quatre met the man’s eyes squarely. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he replied, and knew that Mostyn would understand him exactly.

Mostyn considered him. ‘I have to act now,’ he said. ‘But here’s what I can offer you. I’m declaring total silence. Your little call will be unauthorised, but I’ll go to bat for you when or if the time comes. That covers my ass and it gives you some time to make your contact.’

‘How long?’ Quatre asked quickly.

‘Twenty minutes,’ Mostyn answered. ‘And then I have to make that report. If you get me anything I can use, I’ll do my best to keep your name out of it.’

‘Then I’ll see you in twenty minutes,’ Quatre said.

The announcement about mandatory silence went out just before Quatre reached his own cabin. There was no-one in his path to ask any questions about it, and Quatre could only hope that curious scientists wouldn’t protest too much a half-hour break from computer use. Whoever was watching them might remark on a total cessation of all ship noise. He could only hope about that, too.

He sealed his door, and settled in front of his computer to do what he hadn’t done in more than three years. He did a little piggybacking of his own, hacking onto a satellite signal and scrambling the data chasers behind him. When he was sure he couldn’t be traced outgoing, he dialed a code he did not use very often– not since three years ago, anyway, when it hadn’t precisely worked.

But it worked today. The connection took a skin-crawling seven minutes, and then his blank screen resolved into a static-shot view of a startled face.

 _‘Quatre,’_ Trowa said. _‘What are you doing?’_

‘Funny,’ Quatre answered, sitting back without relaxing at all. ‘I was just about to ask you the same thing.’


	7. Seven

Trowa had given him the number before they parted ways after the war. Quatre had been on the way to the Sun with his, Duo’s, and Heero’s Gundams when he’d heard the news about Mariemaia’s uprising. Alone aboard the transport with their suits, he’d called. There’d been no answer then; Trowa had been with Dekim Barton’s troops for weeks by then, without ever leaving word with any of the other four.

It had worked now, though. Quatre wasn’t sure what that meant. Had Trowa left the line open, knowing Quatre would use it? Or had he merely forgotten its existence?

Not that Trowa forgot anything. It was just that the alternative– Trowa wanting to talk to him– was so implausible.

‘You know what the worst part is,’ Quatre told the screen that held his erstwhile lover’s face. ‘I actually believed you when you told me you came to Dorada to see me.’

He won the tiniest twitch, but Trowa’s face remained smooth but for a faint frown. _‘That was true,’_ Trowa answered. _‘Are you angry about something?’_

‘The bug you planted on the bridge. What does it do?’ He was looking closely for surprise, but wasn’t sure he was seeing any. ‘Who are you working for?’ he pressed.

_‘Quatre, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. The bridge on your ship?’_

He definitely had a headache. He pressed between his eyes for a moment, then looked back at the screen. ‘You don’t do innocent very well.’

 _‘You’re not doing so hot at interrogation.’_ Trowa looked amused. He turned more fully toward the ‘vid, leaning on elbow. _‘Should we start from the beginning?’_

‘I think we’re five years too late for that,’ Quatre said. Trowa blinked, and his frown went from faint to pronounced. ‘If I’m wrong about the bug, I’m sorry. If not, I’m putting you on notice. I found it and I’m getting rid of it, if I have to build a new ship.’ He reached for the keyboard to cut the call, but Trowa’s hand shot out in an instinctive ‘stop’ gesture.

 _‘All right,’_ he admitted slowly. _‘Calm down. And don’t ever just disconnect spyware– you could start an unpleasant chain reaction without the proper codes.’_ He considered Quatre for a long, uncomfortable minute. Quatre stared back, waiting. _‘All right,’_ Trowa repeated. _‘I put it there.’_

‘Why? For who?’

 _‘For me.’_ Trowa dropped back in his chair, two long fingers tapping the arm. _‘You know I bid for the project.’_

‘Yes,’ Quatre responded automatically, suddenly puzzled. ‘What does that–‘

 _‘Unilyd got the job. Well, they shouldn’t have. It was mine. Whatever they did, when the dust settled, Randalane walked away with several very lucrative contracts that had all been in my back pocket, and half of my employees with them.’_ His mouth became a little moue of irritation.

Quatre was the one to blink stupidly this time. ‘This is blackmail?’

Trowa lifted a shoulder and let it fall. _‘It’s proving he’s hackable. It’s letting him know I won’t walk away from– what did your captain call it? Corporate backstabbing.’_

Quatre absorbed that, turning it over and examining it from all sides. ‘It didn’t occur to you that the IEO was not, perhaps, the best pawn for your little game?’

 _‘I thought it was perfect, actually. Big enough for media attention, not sensitive enough to provoke an investigation by the Department of Security.’_ Trowa brushed his hair a little out of his face, revealing a portion of his nose and cheek. _‘It’s a threat. Not an attack.’_

He sighed, and slumped in his chair to press the heel of his palm over his forehead. ‘You know I can’t possibly recommend we go to your company now,’ he said, knowing the protest would register as weak, the underlying acceptance far louder.

Trowa’s frown disappeared, and a tiny little smirk replaced it. _‘After this,’_ he said, _‘who else would you trust?’_

His twenty minutes were almost up. Quatre chewed the inside of his cheek, gazing at a Trowa who looked remarkably unperturbed. He sighed. ‘Good-bye, Trowa,’ he answered.

 _‘Good-bye.’_ They both leaned forward, but Trowa stopped him again. _‘About Dorada– seeing you was the good part.’_

Quatre signed off feeling far less certain about anything than he had before he made the call. On an impulse, he tried the number again immediately, and was gratified, if depressed, to see that at least one guess had been on the mark.

The number was disconnected.

 

**

 

Mostyn turned the bug over in his hand, puffing air through his moustache idly as he examined it. ‘I suppose it was too much to hope for serial numbers,’ he muttered.

‘I doubt you’ll be able to trace it,’ Quatre replied. He fidgeted, not able to sit quite still, even for the sake of courtesy in another man’s cabin. ‘We should just be glad the ESOAA recognised what it was so quickly.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘We should just be glad–‘ He stopped when he earned himself a glare, and grinned.

The captain dropped the bug into a bag they’d taken from one of the labs, and sealed it tightly. ‘O’Callaghan will be all day looking for more of these on his own,’ the older man said.

‘I’ll help when I get back,’ Quatre offered, already standing. ‘But since the crisis has been averted, I’m going to take my scheduled trip to the bottom.’

That finally won him a smile. ‘About time. I wondered when you’d get around to it.’ He winked up at Quatre. ‘Maybe you can draw some pictures for the kids’ broadcast.’

‘One– not very funny, actually. Two– what in hell makes you think I’m capable of speaking to children?’

‘You ever going to tell me who that mysterious call of yours went to?’

He tossed a smile back from the hatch. ‘No,’ he answered lightly. He paused with his hand on the door, thinking of everything Trowa had said. Reluctantly, he added, ‘You should think about getting new security,’ and sighed inwardly. If Trowa was always going to be a step ahead of him, he might as well acknowledge it.

He met Suki Yamamoto on the way to the fourth deck wet lab, and they chatted about everyone’s favourite subject– their upcoming shore leave. She decided to accompany him to the sub launch, and he began to relax as they walked together. The early morning activity had had him wound so tight he hadn’t even realised he was grinding his teeth; his jaw was a little sore when he made himself unclench. Even his banter with Mostyn had had the feeling of after-battle adrenaline– too sharp, too pointed. Now that it was fading, his stomach was a little upset, and he remembered he hadn’t had anything to eat, unless he counted the coffee on the bridge, and he didn’t even want to think about that.

The wash of nausea hit him as he stepped through the hatch into the passageway. He gritted his teeth through it, promising himself free pick of the wet lab’s fridge. But when the disorientation came next, he had to stop and grab for the wall.

Suki’s face swam, blurry, in his vision. ‘Quatre?’ she asked, touching his arm. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Just– need a moment,’ he managed. He breathed deeply through his nose, but lost the rhythm. His heart was pounding so hard. When his head began to mimic it, he slumped against the wall, fighting against rising panic.

‘We need help here!’ Suki was shouting. They were only yards away from the wet lab, and there were suddenly crowds of people around him, Rosalba and Louis and Garima, and Suki was trying to get him to put his head between his knees, and the noise was attracting people from further down the corridor in the van. Quatre barely saw them; it was as if he had suddenly stepped out of his own body. He watched himself fall and hit the ground, aware of gasps as his arms and legs began to shake.

‘He’s having a seizure!’ someone yelled, scared and awed at once.

He pulled back into himself with a crash. He tried desperately to stop himself from thrashing, but there wasn’t a single part of his body that responded to his commands. Coppery taste flooded his mouth as his teeth sliced into his tongue. Enormous pressure wrapped around his chest, and it hit him suddenly that it probably felt like this when you were dying.

Then, as slowly and unevenly as it had started, it was over. He wasn’t sure exactly when he could move on his own again, because he was just abruptly aware of lying still and not moving at all. He felt heavy, ungainly. His head hurt, but his chest didn’t. He didn’t even know his eyes were open until Ehrlich’s strawberry hair came between him and the wall.

‘Back with me?’ she demanded. Though her voice was as hard as ever, her hand on his face wasn’t. She lifted his head and slid something soft beneath it. He tried to reassure her, but nothing came out of him.

She took his pulse one-handed while she straightened him out with the other arm. ‘You’re going to be fine,’ she told him a moment later. ‘Has that ever happened to you before?’

He managed a nod. It had, but not since he was almost too young to remember being scared of it. To be embarrassed by all the grown-ups running frantically about him. The thought of the hall filled with people made his cheeks burn, but Ehrlich seemed to understand him, because she said, ‘We’re alone. Suki went for the nurse.’ She tapped him on the cheek when he closed his eyes. ‘I need you to stay awake until the nurse gets here,’ she ordered.

He tried. But he was unbearably tired.

‘Quatre,’ Ehrlich called. She shook him by the shoulder. ‘Come on. Look at me.’ His eyelids dragged, but he obeyed. She studied him, and seemed glad about whatever she saw. ‘Just until the nurse comes,’ she repeated.

It wasn’t long, but it felt like forever. Then Ehrlich and Nurse Hanley were urging him to his feet, and he found he could do it. They both kept hands under his elbows, and Ehrlich had her arm around his waist, holding him. They used the lift outside the galley up to the second deck and the infirmary, and by the time they were inside the space somewhat larger than a double-bunk cabin, Quatre felt more like himself. They helped him onto a bed, and as soon as his head hit the pillow, his embarrassment returned.

‘I’m fine,’ he said aloud. ‘I just need to catch my breath.’

Hanley snorted. ‘You’re staying right there, mister,’ she told him in no uncertain terms. ‘Kathleen, can you pour some water?’

‘Really,’ Quatre tried again.

‘Are you a doctor?’ the nurse demanded. She waited, hands planted on her broad hips, until he admitted shamefully that he wasn’t. ‘Then why don’t you let me make that assessment, all right?’

Ehrlich wore a funny little smile when she rescued his attention away to a cup of cold water. Quatre propped himself on an elbow to drink, though even that much effort came hard. ‘Thank you,’ he told her, subdued.

She nodded. Then she said, ‘My mother had seizures.’

‘I’m not supposed to,’ he answered. ‘I take medication.’ Hanley came back to his bed, and he said, ‘I do take medication. I’ve been very careful this last week especially.’

‘Prophylactics are preventative,’ the woman explained, ‘not a cure.’ She had brought a little wheeled cabinet behind her, the kind every doctor’s office had, with a little computer monitor on it and a number of gadgety things attached to it. She slipped a pulse oximeter onto his finger, and began to read the data that appeared on the screen. ‘You’re fine,’ she announced a moment later, a little cheekily.

To his surprise, Ehrlich grinned at him. He smiled back drowsily.

The nurse opened a drawer in her rolling cabinet, and removed a needle and four vacutainer tubes. Quatre cringed when he saw how large they were. ‘Really?’ he asked her.

‘Unless you lied about taking your medication,’ she answered. He shook his head. ‘Then I’d like to test how much of the drug is in your blood, and run a quick work-up just to check for other factors.’ She didn’t give him room for protest, snapping a rubber tourniquet around his upper arm and palpating his inside elbow for a vein. ‘I’ll forward all results to your regular doctor,’ she added absently, just as she stuck him with the needle. She slipped the first tube to the end of it, and he watched it fill with his own blood for a moment before glancing up at Ehrlich.

‘You don’t have to stay for this,’ he apologised. ‘It looks like I’ll be out soon.’

‘Try four hours,’ Hanlet interrupted. ‘You’re lying down while I run the labs.’

He was going to miss the sub launch. The way his morning was going, he should probably just accept it gratefully. If he was on it, it would probably sink.

Ehrlich began to move toward the door. ‘I hope you feel better,’ she told him awkwardly. ‘I can– I’ll put you down for the next launch, okay? One of the students can take your spot today.’

‘Kathleen– thanks.’

She nodded stiffly, hesitated in the doorway, then turned and left them alone.

When she finished taking the blood, the nurse propped him up with several pillows, covered him with a warm blanket, and supplied him with a very large glass of apple juice. He did sleep after that, as if he’d been knocked on the head, but he felt immensely stronger when Hanley woke him.

‘I want to test your medication,’ was the first thing she said to him.


	8. Eight

By supper, Quatre was starting to feel like he lived in the infirmary.

He’d supplied as many bodily fluids as he wanted to remember, sleeping between pokes. He gave Nurse Hanley the name and number of his regular doctor and listened to half of their consultation before he was interrupted by Suki’s reappearance, with a lunch of egg salad sandwiches and fresh shrimp. He reassured her of his health, glowing red with embarrassment the entire time, until she finally took pity and left him alone. As if she’d opened a floodgate, he received a number of visitors in the next few hours, some of whom hadn’t even been present when he collapsed. O’Callaghan was among them, and managed to divert his attention for a while with whispered speculation about the bug. He hadn’t found any others, which seemed to confirm Trowa’s story, but Quatre, still feeling rueful about how that particular interview had been turned on its head, wasn’t quite convinced by the lack. He didn’t tell O’Callaghan that he intended to do a second search on his own, if Hanley ever let him out on his own two feet again.

Mostyn came by as well, firmly shutting the hatch in the face of a trio of graduate students from the science crew. He pretended to struggle to keep it closed, leaning on the door in an exaggerated pose. Quatre only groaned, and covered his face with a pillow.

Mostyn took it away from him and sat comfortably on the edge of Quatre’s bunk, grinning down at him. ‘I hear you made quite the impression.’

‘I’ll have to spend weeks un-making it,’ Quatre realised, newly dismayed. ‘It’s the thing that never dies.’

Mostyn didn’t laugh at his half-hearted joke. ‘I’m going to ask this once,’ he said seriously, ‘and I want you to answer truthfully.’

Quatre didn’t like the sound of that. His father had often said that very sentence to him, and it had never ended well. He could only think that Mostyn was getting pressure from the Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin, and they wanted Trowa’s name. Should he reveal it? Trowa would certainly not get the IEO security contract then– but he’d already lost it once and anyway, he shouldn’t be concerned with Trowa’s problems, especially if Trowa chose to solve them in a way that endangered, or at least appeared to, any of his own projects. He was just making up his mind to give the scheme away when Mostyn, taking his worried silence for compliance, asked his question.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you had a medical condition?’

It was so beyond what he’d been expecting that for a moment he was struck dumb. It took far longer than that to switch his mental gears. ‘It never came up,’ was the first thing out of his mouth.

Mostyn sighed. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘I can’t take care of you if you don’t help me do it.’

Quatre paused. ‘I’m sorry?’ he asked.

Mostyn was patient. ‘When the rest of the crew came on, I had medical records for all of them, for insurance. Same with the science team. But you’re only a guest, and you didn’t have any forms to sign. It was your job to tell the fine Nurse Hanley there about any conditions which might require her care.’

‘But, I don’t,’ Quatre said. ‘That is, I’m medicated for it. It’s just– it’s a heart thing, but it’s not bad. I’ve had it all my life.’ He wondered why he felt so young, suddenly. There was something determinedly fatherly in Mostyn’s face, just then, and Quatre saw as he never really had before the difference in their ages, how he was really no older than those graduate students waiting outside, for all that he had never been like them. His shift in perception was not a very happy one, and he longed distinctly for the easy exchange of equals they’d had no more than a few hours before.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re right. It was my responsibility.’

‘Your– problem– it didn’t have anything to do with what happened on the bridge?’ the captain asked with awkward indirectness.

‘I can answer that one,’ Hanley interrupted, coming to his bedside holding his prescription bottle. She asked silently for Quatre’s permission to speak in front of Mostyn, and he granted it with a nod. ‘These are sugar pills,’ she said, dropping them into his open hand. ‘Which would explain why they’re not working at all.’

‘Sugar pills?’ Quatre demanded. ‘What are you talking about?’ Mostyn echoed him only a beat behind.

The nurse shrugged. ‘It happens sometimes,’ she said. ‘Pharmacies mix medicines, they get bad batches from the production line. Whichever one happened to you, it explains why the symptoms of your condition have been returning. You’ve also been going cold turkey since you filled this bottle.’

He glanced automatically at the date. He’d gotten several months supply just before he left for Dorada, four weeks ago now. ‘I don’t remember how long I haven’t been feeling well,’ he admitted. He looked up. ‘Cold turkey– wouldn’t that be a little more severe? I’ve just felt... not great.’

‘It’s different for every person,’ she explained. ‘Your dosage isn’t very high, and you’re otherwise in perfect health. Plus, you’ve been taking propanolol for a very long time. You had it deep in your system. It would take between five days and a week to wear off entirely.’

‘So what happens now?’ Mostyn asked, stepping in. He had that look on his face again, and Quatre was fairly sure he could have lived out the rest of his life without an older man making decisions for him. He frowned, but only made sure that the nurse was answering him, and not the captain.

He needn’t have worried; Hanley knew who her patient was. To Quatre, she said, ‘I’ve already spoken to your doctor about it, and she’s ordering you a refill, with real pills. If she ships it to Canada, you’ll have it by the time we’re due for shore, anyway. But I’d like to ask first why you never had the surgery.’

‘Surgery?’ At first he didn’t know what she meant; then memory dawned. ‘When it first came up, my father said I was too young,’ he told her, and by extension Mostyn, who was frowning at him. ‘My doctors all agreed it could be controlled through medication. After my father died, I just– well, I never thought about it again.’

‘You should think about it now,’ Hanley advised him. ‘Valve replacement surgeries are very common. It would alleviate the problem, and you’d be free of medication after a few months. Compared to being medicated for the rest of your life, it’s a lot more comfortable and a lot less complicated.’

He was frowning, now. He had honestly never contemplated the possibility. But she was right. He was healthy and young enough that recovery would certainly be easy. He often forgot to take his pills as it was. ‘I need to consult my own doctor, of course,’ he heard himself say, and looked up to catch the smug expression on Hanley’s round face.

‘Of course,’ she repeated. ‘Which is why I’ve kept her on the line. Go talk to her.’

He blinked. But she was shooing Mostyn off the bed and toward the hatch, and stripping the light sheet he’d been sleeping under, before he could articulate any kind of protest. He found himself seated before the wall-mounted ‘vid before he knew it, and then he was alone in the infirmary with just the buzz of the computer.

‘Well,’ he muttered to himself, and flicked on the screen. As promised, Doctor Naumann was waiting for him. She smiled when he greeted her, still a little startled.

 _‘Nurse Hanley filled me in on what happened,’_ she began, cutting across his introduction. _‘She told me she was going to suggest the surgery. Will it save time if I just tell you now I agree?’_

‘You never brought it up before,’ Quatre retorted, finding himself confused and outflanked.

Her smile slipped a little, and he realised that had sounded harsh. _‘We never discussed your mitral valve prolapse except to be sure you were happy with the propanolol,’_ she said. _‘If you’d never had a problem with it, I might not have brought it up. Surgery with a condition as mild as yours is only optional. But since it has come up, there’s no reason not to think about it.’_

‘What would the surgery entail?’

Naumann seemed encouraged by his curiosity, however reluctant. _‘It would run two to four hours. They’d open your chest, paralyse your heart, and replace your mitral valve with a synthetic one.’_

‘And this is routine?’ he demanded.

 _‘Absolutely,’_ she assured him quickly. _‘It’s a little more complicated than that– they’ll put you on a respirator and circulate your blood through a machine while your heart is immobilised. Quatre, thousands of these are performed every year in London alone. You’d be in and out of the hospital in a matter of days, and you could be back on your boat in two weeks if you really push it– not that I recommend that.’_

As he had with the bug, he merely let the existence of the surgery sit in front of him, the information scrolling past in Naumann’s polite English accent. He discovered he was still holding his prescription bottle, and he rolled it to look down at the label.

‘How soon could I do this?’ he asked.

He heard tapping, and looked up to see her eyes focused downward, toward a keyboard he couldn’t see. A moment later, she reported triumphantly, _‘I can have you in St Thomas’s in London on Monday.’_

He stared at her. ‘You’re serious? That fast?’

_‘You give me the word, and I’ll schedule you right now. The surgeon would be Patil Pitik. He has an excellent reputation and performs these surgeries all the time. I’ve referred several patients to him.’_

Quatre calculated quickly. They would pull into port late Friday evening, and if he caught a very early flight on Sunday, he might even be able to fit in a few of the meetings he’d scheduled for Toronto. If he was on his feet in two weeks, he’d be able to catch the IEO just before they made for the Panama Canal and the Pacific Ocean.

‘Well– all right,’ he said, decided. ‘Schedule me.’

 

**

 

The nurse touched Quatre on the shoulder, interrupting him with an polite smile. ‘We’re ready to begin, Mr Winner,’ she said.

Quatre sighed. ‘Call Iraia for me,’ he told Mirvat. ‘And if you can cover the conference with the Japanese–‘

 _‘Go have your surgery,’_ his sister scolded. Her voice, tinny and distant in his wireless earpiece, turned sympathetic. _‘I’ll make the calls. And one of us will be there when you wake up.’_

‘Thank you. Good-bye.’ He started to disconnect, stopped at a thought. ‘Don’t forget on Thursday–‘

_‘You know, some of us were doing this before you were even born, baby brother. We’ll handle things while you’re out.’_

He grinned at the ceiling and the scowling nurse’s head that interposed itself between them. ‘Good-bye,’ he repeated, and cut the call. He tried to wear a sheepish expression when he slipped off the piece and handed it over. ‘Sorry,’ he said contritely. ‘I guess this is how I deal with nerves.’

Instantly her look became matronly, and she patted his shoulder. ‘This will be absolutely routine,’ she promised. It was, as far as Quatre could tell, the litany of St Thomas’s Hospital.

A young man in scrubs, already wearing his cotton face mask, appeared with a metal arm and a sheet. He attached it to the table just above Quatre’s collar, and began to drape the yards of material, hiding the doctor who had just appeared with a catheter. ‘We’re ready for anesthesia,’ he said. The nurse released him and reached for his IV tower, and gently fitted a plastic mask over Quatre’s mouth and nose. ‘Once you’re fully asleep we’ll be putting in the respirator tube,’ she told him. ‘You’ll be out for about three hours. All set?’

He nodded.

‘Count backward from ten,’ she instructed.

He drew a breath, and obeyed. ‘Ten,’ he began, and was interrupted again by a commotion at the door. There was a loud, angry exchange, and then the door burst open, revealing an orderly grasping futilely for a smaller man slipping easily through the crowd of surgeons. Quatre, shocked, began to laugh.

It was Duo. The braid hanging out the back of a green cap was unmistakable.

In a moment the nurse had whisked the mask away, her voice chiming in with the protests about Duo’s sudden appearance. Quatre quieted them all with a firm, ‘It’s all right. This is a friend.’

Only Doctor Pitik’s eyes were visible, but they were frowning heavily. ‘I was told no-one would be sitting with you.’

‘That was before I knew he was going into surgery,’ Duo retorted, taking station at the bed. He gripped Quatre’s hand, grinning. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he added softly.

He hadn’t known just how nervous he was until relief flooded him. He returned Duo’s smile gratefully. ‘It’s all right,’ he told Pitik. ‘Is it all right for him to stay?’

It was the nurse who answered, by gently moving Duo to stand behind Quatre’s head. The man with the sheet finished arranging it, effectively blocking Quatre’s view of anything south of his neck. Quatre turned his eyes up to Duo, who was bending over him, and said, ‘You got here fast.’

‘I pulled a few strings with the Preventers. Private jet.’ His fingers wound through Quatre’s hair, a soothing, intimate gesture. ‘You’re not the only one with friends in high places, you know.’

The nurse had the mask in hand again. She cleared her throat, holding it up suggestively. Quatre nodded, and she set it over his mouth and nose again. ‘Ten,’ she prompted.

‘I’ll be here the whole time,’ Duo whispered against his forehead. A moment later his lips pressed there in a dry, welcome kiss of assurance.

‘Ten,’ Quatre repeated. He drew a deep breath, tasting something bitter in the oxygen flow from the mask. ‘Nine. Eight.’ A deeper breath, encouraging the medicine to flow deep into his lungs. The taste was stronger, but he still felt alert. ‘Seven.’

He heard the surgeons moving, felt bodies clustering around him. Someone draped a new, warmer blanket over his legs, set something heavy, a tray, on his knees.

‘Six. Five.’

Duo didn’t break their gaze, but his question was directed to the nurse. ‘How fast does this usually work?’

‘He’s well within parametres,’ she answered.

‘Four,’ Quatre said. Worry hit him. He didn’t feel at all woozy. ‘Three.’

Duo stroked his hair, passing lightly over his temples. Quatre heard them fire up the saw, and wished he hadn’t.

‘Two,’ he said, and drew one last deep breath. ‘... one.’

His eyelids felt heavy. He fought it instinctively, until he realised it was the anaesthesia, finally making an appearance. He let his eyes slide shut of their own accord, and sighed into the mask. ‘Zero,’ he added muzzily, as a joke, and wondered if he’d have to go into the negatives.

Horrible pain woke him. His chest was a gaping pit of fiery agony. Every other part of him was cold, numb. He thought he was screaming, but the muscles of his throat were locked and immobile. All of him was. Vague noise swam around him, and the mechanical breathiness of the respirator forcing oxygen down his windpipe. He tried to open his eyes, but the darkness was unbelievable, swallowing him deeper and deeper into the pain. He floated in it, exerting tortured effort into showing he was alive, growing more and more desperate. If only he could scream!

From a thousand light years away he felt fingers brush over his face, bringing only a second of relief. He wanted to sob. _Duo,_ his tattered mind told him frantically. _Tell Duo!_ Duo would make the hurt stop, someone had to make the hurting stop!

‘He’s sweating,’ said a voice, far far away, and the fingers moved in his hair. Every touch was a mocking mirror of the punishing throbs of his chest.

‘Doctor, look at the monitor.’

‘He’s coming out from under,’ a woman’s voice overrode. ‘Anaesthesia! Now!’

A flood of coolness spread through his arm and plunged into the abyss of his chest. Something warm and wet slipped from his eyes. The darkness swallowed him under, and this time he couldn’t fight his way to the surface. It was almost marvellous to let himself drown.


	9. Nine

The room was dark when he woke. Somewhere there was a soft, relentless beeping. He felt fuzzy and warm, content for a long time to stare through half-opened eyes at what was probably a wall. But eventually the persistent beeping translated to a niggling ache in his chest, and when he finally admitted to the need to shift to ease it, he woke up enough to realise there was something in his hand.

A finger. He was holding a finger.

A finger connected to a hand, with a thumb resting on his thumb and three other fingers spread awkwardly over his. He rolled his head to get a muzzy look at the whole affair, and then spent what seemed like forever worming his elbow under him so he could shift off a curiously insensate backside.

Sudden pressure pressing him back to his pillows made him gasp out something alarmed. A blurry shape leaned over him and said, ‘You’re in the ICU, Quatre. It’s okay. I’m still here.’

Quatre blinked rapidly, and discovered he was clutching the finger in his fist. His mouth was deathly dry, and he couldn’t seem to swallow, but he managed to say, ‘Whaff? Doo?’

The blur resolved into a head, the flash of white into a smile. Duo reached up to stroke his hair, and Quatre relaxed instantly into the warm palm brushing his cheek. ‘Are you thirsty?’ Duo asked him. ‘Here.’ A straw bumped his lips, and Quatre opened his mouth. It was hard to remember at first what to do, but when the first rush of cool water hit his tongue, he shook off the worst of his daze, and drank thirstily. Duo stopped him far too soon, but caressed his face in sympathy.

He was in a private ward, small and grey. A woman slept on a chair at the foot of his bed, covered all the way to her long, light hair. He wondered which of his sisters it was.

‘Iraia,’ Duo told him, anticipating him. ‘She got here last night. It’s about three in the morning.’

He swallowed again and rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth until he thought he might speak coherently. ‘How’did go?’ he tried.

Duo’s smile slipped, and his hand, still covering Quatre’s, tightened its awkward grip. ‘It was a success,’ he hedged. ‘Your new valve is working fine. They think you’ll be on your feet in a few days.’

‘Sommthing wrong though?’ Duo’s face looked haggard. His eyes were too dim, not like Duo’s eyes at all. It was hard to feel overly concerned about it, but some rational part of himself attributed his apathy to sedatives. That part of him knew Duo’s answer was important.

Duo sank back into his own chair, pulled so close to the bed that Quatre realised his housemate must have been sleeping with his head on the mattress. ‘You came out from the anaesthesia,’ he said softly. ‘We’re not sure for how long. Do you remember?’

At first it meant nothing to him. Then a feeling of distant pain, terrible fear. He shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut. Duo’s finger pulled out of his fist, and then both Duo’s hands surrounded his.

‘I’m so sorry, Quatre,’ Duo whispered. ‘I should have noticed sooner. I was supposed to be there for you.’

The sedatives were not done with their work, and he let the unnatural calm spread over him again. There would be time later to remember, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He was glad for Duo’s solid hold on his hand, keeping him anchored.

‘Not your fault,’ he whispered back.

There was a long silence. He hoped it was a good silence, but the odds weren’t high. Duo said finally, ‘I saw you sweating. Then I saw you crying. I should have– I should have known. I should have warned them.’

‘No way for you to know.’

‘You’re a Gundam pilot,’ Duo said bitterly. ‘I’ve seen my own file. I can guess what’s in yours.’

I should have guessed, Quatre thought, dimly surprised. Dismayed. It had never even crossed his mind to warn anyone about his enhanced tolerance for drugs. Gundam pilot indeed.

‘Not your fault,’ he repeated, as forcefully as he could. ‘Duo.’

There was another long silence. Then Duo leaned over him, to kiss his forehead again, as if he were a little child. He felt like one. ‘You need about thirty hours more sleep,’ Duo told him. ‘Think you can manage?’

He could have slept a year. Weariness slammed him like an ocean wave. ‘You’ll be here?’

Another kiss, this time on his cheek. ‘I swear.’

He sighed, and turned his face into the clean-smelling pillow. ‘That’s good.’

 

**

 

‘Surgery?’ Trowa stared at Duo’s image in very sharp dismay. ‘What surgery?’

 _‘Heart valve replacement.’_ Duo ran a hand through his limp hair, then down over his face, rubbing at a day’s growth of stubble. _‘It was a distinctly unpleasant experience, and I’ve been on both ends of torture.’_

Heart valve replacement. Quatre’s real pills still sat in his desk. A gnawing feeling began to form in the pit of his gut. ‘Is he all right?’ he made himself ask levelly. ‘Those are pretty routine.’

 _‘No, he’s not all right,’_ Duo snapped at him. _‘And you could fucking be here. This is a shitty relationship you two have.’_ Startled, Trowa found himself staring again. He was saved the need to reply when contrition crept into Duo’s face. _‘I’m sorry,’_ Deathscythe’s pilot added grudgingly. _‘Just– I think he’d really appreciate having you here. I think you should be here.’_

‘Are you going to explain what happened or do I need to make a flight before I’ll get any information?’

 _‘He woke up during the surgery. He says he doesn’t really remember it, but_ now _they’re going to great lengths to keep him drugged.’_

The gnawing feeling was probably guilt. Guilt wasn’t something he’d had much traffic with, before Quatre, but he was getting a thorough education in it these days. ‘How serious,’ he managed to ask, though his voice sounded weak even to his own ears.

Oddly, though, it mollified Duo. _‘It looked serious from where I was sitting. The hospital has gone into don’t-sue mode. The surgeon won’t admit it happened and his primary is up in arms. His sisters have already called together a legal team.’_

‘I can’t be there right now,’ Trowa told him. ‘I’m working with a big-time client.’

Duo’s face went red, a bad sign. _‘You’ve got a big-time boyfriend who’s one step from big-time-trauma. And a friend who’s about to be big-time convinced you’re a big-time schmuck and a half, Barton!’_

‘You said yourself he doesn’t remember it.’

 _‘I said_ he said _he doesn’t remember it!’_

‘I’ll call him when he’s out of ICU,’ he said flatly. ‘Thanks for the news. Good-bye, Duo.’ He disconnected before Duo could get out more than a strangled snarl, and gazed dumbly at the blank screen.

It was a long time before he thought to try eating something to ease his stomach. It didn’t help noticeably.

 

**

 

Iraia returned to the large oak conference table carrying a pewter tray of tea things. Duo, playing restlessly with his enormous leather swivel chair, spun about to whisk a pecan biscuit from the tray before Iraia set it down.

‘Tea?’ she asked Quatre.

‘Double cream,’ he answered absently, tugging at his stiff collar. Iraia swatted his hand away, and presented him with a saucer and cup. Quatre ran a fingertip around the golden rim of the cup, watching the cream billow upward into the leaf-brown tea. It steamed gently.

Duo finished off his biscuit, and nudged Quatre in the shoulder. ‘You sure you want to do this?’

‘Mostly I want to get out of Dodge,’ Quatre told him, summoning a little smile. ‘You make those reservations?’

‘This morning.’ Duo returned his grin. ‘They must like you there. You’re getting the room you had before. And they’re bringing on a nurse for you.’

Quatre groaned, but Iraia was nodding her approval. ‘Suck it up,’ she teased him gently. ‘I’d much rather you have someone nearby than not.’ The light faded quickly from her round face. ‘I wish it was me,’ she added. ‘I don’t like the idea of you being there by yourself.’ Her eyes, the same shade of blue as his, flickered to his chest, then away, to the briefcase that sat on his lap.

He pressed her hand gently with his. ‘I know,’ he told her, accepting her implicit apology and making his own. ‘But– I was thinking about that.’ He glanced at Duo, including him in the moment. ‘Think maybe you could take a break from the Preventers?’ he asked, trying not to sound too hopeful. ‘I know you’re probably stretching your leave as it is, but Dorada is beautiful. I’d love for you to see it.’ Duo’s face had gone strangely blank, and Quatre looked at him nervously. ‘Maybe just for a few days,’ he temporised. ‘Take a little holiday. Have you ever been to Spain? You wouldn’t be responsible for me, I mean, I’m on my feet, and I’m not even bringing any work with me, it’s pure rest for two weeks...’ He trailed off uncertainly. When he’d first thought of proposing that Duo join him at the hotel where he intended to finish his recovery, it had seemed like a good idea. But Duo wasn’t answering, not even to say he couldn’t do it or had to go back to work.

Finally Duo spoke. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said slowly. ‘But are you sure you want to invite me? Not– someone else?’

Quatre blinked at him, confused. ‘Who else would I invite? You mean one of my sisters?’

They were prevented from pursuing their odd inability to communicate by a rap at the door. It opened a moment later, as Iraia eased her hand out from under his and Duo retreated back into silence, his eyes cold on the men and women entering the room. Quatre, safe between them, drew as deep a breath as he could with a sore chest, and snapped the locks on his briefcase.

The opposite side of the table filled quickly– two of the top hospital administrators and three of their lawyers, Dr Pitik and two of the nurses who had been present during his surgery, and two people he couldn’t identify at all, but who were old enough and dressed well enough to be trustees. Looking at them taking their seats in the hospital’s fine conference room, Quatre let himself slip into business mode. The air was tense, a little hostile, but he sensed nervousness and resentment, especially from the doctor and his staff. The lawyers he couldn’t read at all.

‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, and reached for his tea. It was a little cooler than he liked, having sat for too long in the chilly room, but he sipped it without hurry, and set it back on its ceramic saucer with a tiny clink, sliding it away towards Iraia. ‘I hope I won’t keep you long.’

One of the lawyers, a thin woman in her fifties with an impressive chignon of steely grey hair, folded her hands on the table. ‘Mr Winner, I am Joyce Appleton, a partner with Lambert & Saxony.’ They exchanged grave nods. ‘I’ve read your statement and those of the hospital staff,’ she said, and beside her, one of the other lawyers produced several documents, presumably those under discussion. Quatre didn’t bother to look at them. ‘St Thomas’s is not prepared at this time to admit culpability to any negligence, and frankly, I see very little by way of proof.’

‘I’ll tell you what I don’t see,’ Duo interrupted, leaning forward suddenly. ‘I don’t see Nurse Carr. You know– the woman who corroborated our statements?’ He planted his chin on his hand. ‘Maybe you lost her?’ he added, oozing innocence.

‘You may not be willing to admit to negligence,’ Iraia said smoothly, exactly the right beat after Duo’s flippant but significant question. ‘But I’m willing to bet that you’ve got an offer on the table anyway.’

There was a little, prickly silence. The two old men Quatre thought were the trustees were watching him with hooded eyes. Quatre returned the looks politely.

Appleton said, ‘We can give you something toward pain and mental anguish,’ she said briskly, as if she weren’t conceding a thing. ‘In exchange for a non-disclosure agreement.’

Quatre glanced away from the trustees, and sighed. ‘No,’ he answered.

Appleton turned a sharp expression his way. ‘We are prepared to be more than fair, Mr Winner,’ she said.

‘I have plenty of money,’ he told her. ‘I don’t need more of it.’ He lifted the lid of his briefcase, and removed a packet of documents from inside it. He tossed it to the table, watching it slide in her direction. ‘I have an offer for you. I’m making a directed grant to St Thomas’s. Enough to cover the purchase of brain activity monitors for each surgical theatre, and to hire or train technicians to operate them.’

‘Monitors?’ It was Pitik who threw in that incredulous question. Quatre looked, and saw interest in that sullen face. They had not seen each other since the surgery that had gone awry, and Quatre wondered what Pitik had thought Quatre would do. Accuse him of wielding a weapon and inflicting torture, probably. Quatre smiled slightly, and inclined his head. Pitik glanced up the table, at the lawyers, at the administrators. ‘I’ve been arguing for brain wave monitoring for years,’ he added.

‘Double-blind tests have shown that brain wave monitors are more than eighty percent more effective than bispectral index monitors in determining anaesthesia awareness,’ Iraia filled in. ‘That’s very high odds that if my brother had been given access to that technology, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now.’

‘There is a study to prove every point of view,’ Appleton said dismissively. ‘You’re hardly equipped to make demands of the hospital based on information from the internet–‘

‘I’m a neurologist,’ Iraia corrected her icily. ‘And I serve on the board of Omdurman Teaching Hospital in Sudan.’

Quatre took back control of the dialogue quietly, but firmly. ‘The grant, as I said, covers the expense of the initial purchase and the disposition of staff. I’ve designated a period of five weeks for the hospital to provide me with a receipt and progress report. St Thomas will be subject to inspection by an independent watch organisation without prior notice for eighteen months, during which time I will personally return to see the monitors for myself. Assuming we reach the end of that time without violation of the terms, I will then consider our business concluded.’ He nodded the papers, which Appleton reluctantly picked up and examined. ‘As for the non-disclosure agreement, I took the liberty of having one drawn up. Dependent, of course, on satisfactory fulfilment of the terms outlined in my grant.’

One of the administrators, a middle-aged man with prematurely white hair and a faint L1 accent, caught Quatre’s eyes. ‘I’m not sure I understand where this is coming from,’ he said, and he certainly sounded puzzled.

Quatre, on the other hand, discovered he had a headache, and was hit with a desire to lie down in a dark room. He tried to keep his sudden discomfort from his voice when he answered courteously. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘a settlement does not benefit anyone. Not me, and hardly St Thomas’s. As I understand it, a settlement only results in higher insurance premiums, which passes increased costs on to the consumer. I’d rather you be able to offer improved service than have to charge more for what you’ve already got.’ He looked back at Appleton. ‘Tell them it’s a good deal,’ he murmured wearily.

The austere woman lowered his contract, and consulted in whispers with her colleagues. Quatre watched them tiredly, while Duo rubbed a soothing little circle on his right knee. Perhaps three minutes later, the lawyers came up for air, and Appleton turned to the trustees.

‘It is a good deal,’ she confirmed reluctantly. ‘I am at a loss to explain it, and I want time to examine the documents more closely... but I’m tentatively recommending you accept.’

Quatre, watching for it, got his nod a moment later. He gripped the handle of his briefcase, and rose to his feet. He presented Appleton with a card. ‘The local branch of my law firm,’ he said. ‘They’ll handle the paperwork after your more thorough examination. You’ll have the cheque immediately.’ Duo and Iraia joined him, and suddenly everyone at the table was hastily rising. The noise of it was a little jolting, but Duo stayed close to his side, slipping an unobtrusive hand under his elbow. They moved toward the door, and no-one bothered to stop them. Quatre hesitated only as he passed by Pitik; he took care to meet the surgeon’s eyes, and show his respect with an inclination of his head. He got a surprised expression, and a quick little bow in return.

And then, finally, they were out in the hallway, and Iraia punched the call button for the lift. She was grinning, obviously excited by what had been, Quatre knew, an easy win.

‘They should all be that good,’ he told her, and smiled when she impulsively kissed his cheek. He caught her hand, and drew her down for a firmer kiss on the brow. Iraia was his favourite sibling, not just for the connection they shared from having witnessed their father’s death together. There was sorrow between them, but a much deeper love and lightness. He just wished she didn’t tower over him quite so much.

The lift arrived, and the three of them piled into it. Duo took Quatre’s briefcase, and leaned against the mirrored wall facing him.

‘Were you serious about me going with you to Spain?’ he demanded suddenly.

Quatre nodded, as Iraia settled her arm about his shoulders. ‘Absolutely,’ he answered. ‘If you can,’ he added hastily. ‘I really think you’d love it. It would be like one of our mini-breaks, only without death-defying stunts or V-8 motors.’

‘Well– I’m– ‘ Duo frowned down at Quatre’s briefcase as he fiddled with the brass snap-locks. ‘I’m really glad you asked me,’ he finished finally, sounding a little embarrassed. ‘I’d really like to go. Yeah.’

‘Excellent,’ Iraia proclaimed, just as they arrived at the first floor. ‘I expect you both to come back brown as walnuts and with a little extra meat on your bones,’ she ordered, assuming a matronly tone that brooked no argument. ‘I’ll give you the list for looking after Quatre,’ she added, ignoring her brother’s loud groan and Duo’s crooked grin.


	10. Ten

Wufei shifted his duffle to his right hand, and flashed his badge at the two security guards stationed by the xray. Trowa snorted his disapproval as the senior guard, a tall black man, hurried to open an inoperative lane for them, letting them through without so much as frisking them.

‘Be grateful,’ Wufei muttered to him, as they left the check gate and turned left down the broad avenue of shops and harried passengers. He shouldered his duffle, and Trowa did the same with his own, careful to muffle any suspicious clanking with his body.

‘For their own sake, they shouldn’t make it quite so easy,’ Trowa retorted, not at all mollified. ‘We could have stolen the IDs.’

‘I’m not inclined to be worried about the state of airport security, Barton! Or do you want to be discovered before we even make it to the gate?’ Trowa was aware of the other man’s scrutiny, but inclined himself to be grumpy about it. He twitched his head forward so that his hair fell further into his face; at the very least, it blocked his own view of Wufei, and that was good enough.

He didn’t get away with it for long. They had reached D Section, where their jet was waiting for them. Wufei took care of the business of handing their tickets to the young lady at the counter, who assured them their luggage was already being loaded and promised a boarding call in the next few minutes. They stepped away from the counter to the window, framed by ridiculous silk palm trees in large cement potters. Trowa eyed the effect with distaste, and propped his shoulder against the glass. Wufei did not lean. He halted facing Trowa.

‘What?’ he demanded.

Trowa affected not to notice his partner’s impatience. He glanced over his shoulder to what was apparently their jet, and watched the cargo bay being shut and a metal staircase roll out toward the hatch. ‘What, what?’

Wufei’s face, never far from it anyway, slipped into a scowl. ‘You’ve been pissed off all morning.’

‘I’m not pissed,’ Trowa muttered, shoving one hand deep in the pocket of his black peacoat and touching his Colt .38 in its holster through the fabric lining. It brought him only a little reassurance.

‘Then you have a poor way of expressing happiness,’ Wufei said. He slid his hands into his own pockets, not a gesture the Asian man made frequently. It was a pose of deliberate casualness, probably an imitation of Maxwell. Duo had more attitude though, a shit-eating grin to balance the sly slump, Trowa thought. And scowled himself for thinking about Duo, and then thinking about what thinking about Duo led to.

‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ Wufei continued, pushing it just a little too far, ‘everything is going exactly as we planned. Quatre’s off the ship and the IEO is scheduled to be our sitting target in the middle of the Atlantic. White Fang is with us. Half of Dekim Barton’s personal army. Mariemaia Khushrenada is going to walk out of her prison cell into a coup d’etat.’

‘Roll,’ Trowa corrected, just to be sleazy. ‘I know exactly how far we’ve come. I did all the dirty work, remember? The things you thought were beneath you?’ He cocked his head at the flush that stained Wufei’s caramel-coloured cheeks. ‘Just be glad I don’t mind getting dirty for the cause,’ he added sarcastically.

‘What are you going on about?’

So he was pissed off. There wasn’t, he knew, absolutely anything he could do about it. And it didn’t really make him feel better to mock Wufei, but mocking Wufei was the only outlet he was going to get. Probably for the rest of his life, short as it was likely to be.

They were interrupted by the girl at the counter, who announced over the speakers that Flight 203 was ready to board. They left their station at the window for the stairwell to the ground floor, trailed by a man in an expensive suit yammering into one of those over-ear pieces that Quatre always used, and an old woman carrying her dog under her arm. From the stairwell, they exited onto the runway. Damp gusts of wind buffeted them heavily there, and Trowa noticed that a canopy had been added to their ladder up to the jet. Wufei climbed first, ignoring the helping hand of one of the uniformed stewards, and Trowa was a step behind him, his hand still in his pocket to keep his jacket from blowing open in the wind. They ducked under the hatch, and another steward escorted them to their seats.

It was, Trowa noticed, a very nice jet. The seats wouldn’t have been out of place in a private entertainment center, being plush leather and reclining. There were brass lampstands with creamy glass shades instead of overheads, and the loudspeaker was broadcasting Vivaldi. He dropped his duffle onto the cushions of his seat, then carefully slid it beneath. Wufei did the same across the narrow aisle, and dropped into his seat with a sigh.

While the businessman– still talking loudly to the air– and the woman cum dog were settling in closer to the cockpit, Wufei leaned toward him, and said, ‘Quatre was spotted in London two days ago, with one of his sisters. And Duo. He’s back in Spain now, at that hotel where they held the IEO launch.’ He paused, a dramatic moment wasted on Trowa, who already knew the ending. ‘With Duo,’ the Preventer added.

‘I suppose you saw this with your psychic powers,’ Trowa retorted sourly, sitting and reaching for his safety belt.

‘I’ve had them tailed.’ Wufei did not strap in, though he adjusted the flow of air over his seat and lowered his light. ‘I usually watch Quatre. And I used to watch you.’

What Wufei didn’t know, Trowa was sure, was that the spying games had been a mutual past-time. But he didn’t give up information without getting something back, and that was a secret he’d been keeping comfortably since Wufei had surprised him by sneaking off to join Barton’s army the first time.

When he didn’t reply, Wufei seemed to take his own answers from the silence. ‘I never thought you were very close, for lovers,’ he said. ‘And it was your idea to steal the pills.’

‘Lovers have love,’ Trowa said flatly, closing his eyes to announce his intention to nap during the flight. ‘We have sex. And not very damn frequently.’

Quatre was in Spain, recovering from a surgery he shouldn’t have had to have.

With Duo.

‘You are wise to distance yourself now,’ Wufei said, missing the point entirely with the firm tone of the self-righteous. It grated on every nerve Trowa was bent on ignoring. Ahead of them, the hatch was closed and locked, and the stewards made themselves scarce by drawing a curtain shut between the cockpit and passenger bay. ‘He will not be an ally in the war to come,’ Wufei continued softly, as the engines began to purr. Trowa tilted his head just enough to look at Wufei from slitted eyes. ‘Of course I wish he was,’ the other man told him. ‘Quatre is one of the most worthy and brave men I know. But he’s too deeply invested in this... ‘ Distaste coloured Wufei’s face this time, and...

And, Trowa realised suddenly, self-loathing.

‘Peace,’ Trowa supplied eventually, closing his eyes again and settling deep into his seat. ‘The word you’re looking for is peace.’

 

**

 

‘This,’ Duo said, ‘has got to be the grossest thing I have ever seen.’ He gingerly handed the sea cucumber to Quatre, snatching his fingers away when it suddenly began to spurt white thread-like liquid from an orifice. ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed, hiding his nose in his inside elbow. ‘You got to be kidding me!’

Quatre laughed, keeping a gentle hold on the creature as it flopped sluggishly. ‘A little gross,’ he acknowledged. ‘But I think it’s kind of cool. And they’re really useful. Rachel– she’s a graduate student on the IEO– she’s looking into the use of sea cucumbers in tissue regrowth. Also, they make a really great stew.’

Duo gagged exaggeratedly. ‘You ate one of these things?’

Quatre grinned at him, and let the cucumber slide back into the briny touch-tank. It settled to the bottom looking positively disgruntled, and began to burrow back under the sand. ‘I could have the lab send a few over for dinner tonight,’ he suggested innocently. ‘They’re considered a delicacy.’

‘Yeah– like quail eggs and caviar and snails and pate and goose liver. Is that the rule? If it’s gross and gooey, it’s a delicacy?’ They both sniggered at that one, as they rinsed their hands at a nearby sink. ‘Rich people,’ Duo said with pretended disdain. ‘You’re all weird.’

‘Why do you think we keep ourselves so segregated? We’re just trying to protect the general population.’

‘Oh, that’s it.’

‘Turn left,’ Quatre said suddenly. ‘I want to see if the dolphins are still here.’

‘Where else would they be?’ Duo asked, though he obediently pushed on the door they were passing, courteously holding it while Quatre passed through.

‘The dolphins are free to come and go,’ Quatre explained. ‘The ESOAA passed legislation a few years ago regulating retention of animals past a certain intelligence quotient. No more whales, sharks, or dolphins in aquariums or theme parks, except for rehabilitation and release.’ They continued on their way through the interconnected maze that was the Dorada Aquarium. It was still early in the tourist season, which meant that the public rooms were nearly empty. Some of the staff, however, remembered Quatre from the two weeks he’d spent in Dorada not long ago. Conversations were short, as Duo had only slightly more Spanish than Quatre, who had none. When they left the Bays and Beaches section, they headed toward the Aquatic Environments situated out in the sun, in tanks or in the ocean itself. The huge man-made inlet that formed Dorada’s premier attraction was, today, cooled by a breeze but unrepentantly sunny. Duo shed his outer shirt immediately, tying it about his waist as they crossed the boardwalk toward the swim tanks. When Quatre heard a high-pitched whistle, he broke into a jog, already grinning his excitement.

Duo caught up with him a moment later, just as Quatre clattered to the bottom of a staircase and hit the large plate-glass wall of the tank’s lower level viewports. The L2 native made his own whistle as a gleaming silver body arced through the green water, performing tight, playful twirls as it swam toward them. Quatre pressed a hand to the glass, watching in delight as the dolphin flipped in a sudden barrel roll, then sped back up to the surface and out of their eyesight.

‘Wow,’ Duo said softly, clearly impressed. ‘That was beautiful.’

‘That was Camus,’ Quatre said. ‘I think. He had a tussle with a shark and lost part of his dorsal fin. He’s the playful one.’ He squinted through the water, hoping to see a second body. ‘He and Albert are usually together,’ he continued. ‘Sort of like you and me,’ he added.

Duo grinned at him, tentatively lifting his palm to the glass and looking into the tank. ‘They named their dolphins Albert and Camus?’

He had to laugh. ‘I know,’ he muttered. ‘I said the same thing.’ He grabbed Duo’s arm a second later, as two dolphins emerged from the murky water and bobbed toward the window where they stood. ‘That’s him!’ he told Duo. ‘I learnt to swim with Albert. I wonder if he remembers me?’

‘I’d say so,’ Duo answered, as two curious spouts butted against the glass not far from Quatre’s hand.

Sun happy friend

Quatre blinked, and glanced away from Albert’s wide grey eye to Duo. ‘Did you say something?’

‘I said, I’d say he remembers you.’

‘No, after that.’ Duo shrugged, and shook his head.

Camus had lost interest by the time Quatre turned back. Albert nodded his large head up and down, turning a lazy circle and then floating upside down. Quatre smiled, leaning his forehead on the glass to watch. ‘It’s good to see you again,’ he whispered to the grinning beast.

small-friend

He looked automatically at Duo, but this time didn’t need to be told that Duo hadn’t opened his mouth– because Duo was several yards up the wooden boardwalk where it wound upward about the edge of the tank. Quatre met the single eye that was facing him. ‘Albert,’ he murmured.

There was no answer. The dolphin winked at him, and swam away. Quatre had to work hard to shake off the impression that he’d just been spoken to by a creature that didn’t use speech. Probably, he thought, it was his own emotion getting the better of him. Or more likely, the lingering effects of the pill he’d taken on the plane to help him sleep through the night.

Duo rejoined him a few moments later. ‘What’s next?’ he asked Quatre cheerfully.

He shrugged off the lingering questions. ‘Mariah told me they’re doing a coral run here tomorrow. Do you want to go?’

‘Coral?’ Duo repeated. ‘As in– under-water coral?’

‘That’s– usually where it’s found, yes.’

Duo lifted his fringe out of his eyes and held it there with a fist, a nervous gesture he’d developed somewhere in the years they’d been friends. He dropped it a moment later, and the loose hairs settled bizarrely over his pale forehead.

‘I don’t know how to swim,’ Duo said, sounding embarrassed.

Quatre only laughed. ‘Neither did I until a month ago. I can show you how. It’s easier than learning to ski was, that’s for damn sure.’

Less than an hour later Quatre had retrieved his wetsuit from their hotel suite and found a spare for Duo, and he marched them down to the outdoor pool. It was only eleven, and they had several hours before the worst of the afternoon heat would chase them back inside. He sent Duo off to change in the bath house, and claimed them a table with a wide umbrella of Spanish mustard yellow and a stack of fluffy, fresh-smelling towels. He sat on the edge of the shallow end to wait for Duo, who was taking a rather long time to strip and put on a bathing suit.

Finally he slipped over the side of the pool, letting himself drop into the waist-deep water. ‘Come on,’ he called out. ‘Duo, hurry up.’

Duo obediently emerged from the changing house, tugging at the short thighs of his wetsuit. ‘I look like a moron,’ he called back.

‘You look just like me,’ Quatre corrected, pretending to be offended. He grinned as Duo came cautiously closer to the pool. ‘The water is twenty-five degrees,’ he said. ‘It’s warm enough you won’t freeze.’

Duo shuffled the last few steps, his borrowed rubber shoes scuffing on the concrete. He bent and dipped a hand into the water. Quatre let him do it, pushing off from the wall and letting himself float, paddling lightly with his arms. As he’d thought, Duo grew braver once he determined the water wasn’t going to swallow him. He deliberately didn’t watch as Duo worked himself around to sitting with his legs over the edge. When movement ceased, however, Quatre swam back, and stood up facing Duo.

‘Take my hands,’ he instructed, holding them out. ‘We’re not going to go any deeper than this.’ For a while.

Duo wore a look of mistrust that Quatre knew wasn’t really directed toward himself. But Duo’s hands left their tight grip of the tiles and grasped Quatre’s. Quatre tugged gently, and Duo, looking like he was throwing himself into a nuclear reactor, let his butt slide to the edge and over. He gasped slightly when he landed waist-deep.

‘I’ll show you how to float first,’ Quatre told him. ‘It’s really easy. Trust me?’

‘I hate when you put it that way,’ Duo groused. ‘You make it all– personal, and everything.’

Quatre grinned at him. ‘First, let’s get you wet. Crouch down.’

‘I don’t– I don’t want to put my head under.’

‘You won’t,’ Quatre promised. ‘Crouch down. Come on.’ He did it himself, keeping his hold on Duo’s hands as he sank into water up to his neck. Duo’s eyes were wild when the water brushed his chin, but Quatre held them still, keeping them balanced, until Duo acclimated.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Now I’m going to stand up again and I want to have you lie on your back. I’ll keep my hands under you at first, until you’re ready to go solo. All right?’

‘Yeah.’ Duo looked a little bereft when Quatre released his hands, but he moved when Quatre guided him by the shoulders into stretching out. His body, of course, floated, bobbing a little. Quatre supported him under the small of the back or the head, showing him how to spread his arms a little, giving him time to relax. When Duo’s eyes finally fluttered closed and stayed that way, Quatre grinned his triumph. He took his time moving his hand away from its position supporting Duo’s shoulder, and then he stepped back.

‘Look,’ he murmured.

Duo opened his eyes, saw he was alone, and promptly sank. Quatre managed to grab him before his head went under, but Duo was sputtering and splashing gracelessly as Quatre hauled him back up to standing. Quatre laughed, and tried not to when Duo threw a look of wretched betrayal at him. ‘You were doing great,’ he enthused. ‘You floated on your own for almost a minute. You’re a natural.’

Duo lifted his sopping braid, and dropped it with an audible slop against his back. His mouth moved, screwed to the left, then said, ‘Really?’

Quatre grinned again. ‘Really. Think you’re up to a dog-paddle?’

‘You’re bringing dogs into the pool?’

They spent the morning in the water, interrupted only once by a helpful lifeguard who invited them to join him for a drink break. Duo quit after making his way up to full submersion, claiming it was starting to really freak him out. He set himself at their table beside the pool, protected by the large umbrella, and was soon absorbed in paperwork. Quatre left him to it, understanding he was being give a second break of sorts, and occupied himself with laps across the pool. When his chest began to ache– disgustingly soon– he floated for a while, eyes closed to the warmth of the Spanish sun, body cool in the water.

Duo called him out of the pool at one, and they ate a light lunch. Quatre found himself shaky by the time they paid their bill, and Duo suggested they follow local culture and take a mid-day siesta. Quatre was asleep almost before he hit his pillow. Their first real day in Dorada, and he was done in by nothing more strenuous than walking to the Aquarium and swimming a bit. He woke long enough to mumble a thank-you when Duo covered him with a light quilt.

He was in Sandrock. It was dark through the open viewports, the unrelieved black of Deep Space. He could feel the cold pressure of vacuum pressing on his Gundam, imagined it leaking through unsealed metal sheets and past loosened screws, slowly stealing his air. His father had died like that, suffocating while his air was sucked out through the hull breach. He’d stood by uselessly while his father gulped his last desperate lungsful. Not being able to watch Kadar Winner suffer didn’t stop him from imagining it. He knew what it looked like. He’d killed people that way.

He could hear a breeze around him, from those little wisps of air drawn inevitably toward the dangerous leaks. He could smell the vacuum around him like methane, a poisonous tang slipping down his throat.

 _He’s sweating,_ Sandrock said, high and alarmed.

He was in the Libra, flying expertly through the low-grav halls. He found Dorothy Catalonia in the Central Computer, just as he’d expected. The slender young woman with flowing blonde hair and the VR mask, a lethal, feminine version of the madman who led the battle outside, produced a fencing foil. They had known each other once, as children, had played in a corner while their grown-up parents conducted business overhead. He’d mistaken her for one of his sisters, not old enough himself to understand that not every girl with yellow hair was related to him. She leapt through the air, effortlessly graceful in low-g, twisting lithe as a gazelle. He wove about her, evading her blows, understepping a riposte and spinning into a wall. Sandrock’s whispers curled between them, _He’s sweating, stop fighting!_ He knew when he made the mistake that killed him, left his torso open protecting his flank, watched the needle-sharp point of the epee come closer and closer.

He woke thrashing, trying to pull the sword from his chest. Dark hair swung against his face, blinding him, as strong hands grabbed his and pulled them away from his chest.

‘You’re all right!’ Duo shouted. ‘Quatre, you’re all right, you’re safe.’ His arm came free for just a second, and then Duo slapped him hard on the cheek.

Reason returned. The phantom agony in his chest faded with the dream.

Quatre lay still, panting hard, becoming aware of Duo kneeling over him, loose hair a tangled fall about them. The sound of his own blood in his ears merged with the clack of the overhead fan, the faint crash and wash of waves outside the open windows. It was late afternoon and the rich golden sunlight was falling across the carpet, across the quilt Quatre had tossed aside during his nightmare.

‘I thought I was dying,’ he murmured to Duo. Who freed his hand, and with a tissue from beside the bed, began to dab cooling sweat from his face. Quatre let him, shutting his eyes tight, confronting his own body and finding it whole. ‘Silly, huh,’ he managed.

Duo’s fingers came to rest against his cheek. ‘If you didn’t dream, you’d already be dead,’ he answered.

Quatre puffed a laugh out of a throat that was too dry. ‘We’re going to have to work on more comforting lines.’ When he opened his eyes, Duo was grinning at him.


	11. Eleven

Wufei turned away from the spotting scope peeking carefully between the plastic window blinds of their fifteenth-floor apartment. ‘Night shift engaged,’ he reported. ‘Everyone’s out who’s scheduled to leave.’

Trowa finished cleaning his back-up Glock, and wiped it down with a silicone cloth before sliding it into the holster at the small of his back. ‘Suit up,’ he ordered, and the men around them burst into movement. Trowa left his perch on the double bed and joined Wufei at the window to look out at their target.

It was squat and disarmingly unassuming, for a prison. Trowa knew better than Wufei how ridiculously easy it was to break in, but they weren’t concerned with a single entry and clean getaway tonight. Zaporozhye was no sleepy backwater, but the Zhovtnevy Sector, primarily administrative, shut down at seven. The prison that held Mariemaia Khushrenada– once a fort, and an antiquated one at that– engaged its night shift at nine. They had waited until ten to be sure they wouldn’t have any surprises to deal with.

The six men and four women behind Trowa who were dressing rapidly for combat were drawn entirely from the troops who had been hand-selected as Dekim Barton’s officer corps. They were personally known to both Wufei and himself. Five had been in White Fang before they’d gone to Barton. Tonight, they were all Preventers.

They wore stolen uniforms and false ID badges. The patches on the left shoulder of their flak jackets were the same as the one on Wufei’s, the same that Trowa wore himself. Their black beanies with the cuffs pulled low over the forehead were embossed with the same logo, the six-sided polygram and stylized “P.” Their weaponry, supplied unknowingly by Preventer stores, was all registered to the HQ in London. It had taken Wufei time and a lot of effort to quietly stock up even the little that they had scraped together for this part of the mission, but looking at their troop, Trowa knew in his bones it would work. Trowa looked at the excitement in their faces, the adrenaline thrumming beneath the professionalism. He found he was smirking, and was careful to wipe all expression from his face before he turned back to the window.

‘No unnecessary bloodshed,’ Wufei told them all, as they turned expectant faces toward their leaders. ‘Our mission is to free Khushrenada, to be seen and not captured. Catalonia, I leave it to you to impress our hostages with our statement of purpose.’

With her lustrous blonde hair hidden beneath her cap and her pointed chin jutting a fierce counterpoint to her wide blue eyes, Dorothy Catalonia was recognisable only to someone who already knew who he was looking at. Trowa would have known her anywhere by the aristocratic lay of her slender hand on her cocked hip. By the zeal in every line of her body. She said, ‘I think they’ll be very impressed.’

Not for the first time, Trowa thought with distaste that Dorothy Catalonia was probably psychotic. If her flaws ever outweighed her usefulness to their revolution, he would be happy to take charge of removing her from the face of the planet.

Wufei, oblivious to his partner’s thoughts, was nodding crisply. ‘Smooth, and quick,’ he asserted one final time, and snapped the blinds closed. His face set somewhere between anticipation and satisfaction, he finished, ‘For Khushrenada.’

‘Aye, sir!’ their troop shouted, saluting to a man. Even Catalonia, who met Trowa’s eyes as her hand lifted lazily to her brow.

 

**

 

Quatre could hear Duo thinking from the other bed. There were no restless movements, no grunts or grumbles. It was the lack of those more than anything that told him to anticipate the moment. He had to wait much longer for it than he expected to, but Duo was unsettled, that much he could sense, and whatever it was was not going to come easily or happily.

Quatre had been staring at the dimly visible blades of their overhead fan for perhaps two hours, just waiting for it, when Duo suddenly broke the silence. He said, ‘Can I ask you something?’

Part of him answered, Finally. Part of him dreading speaking at all. The rest was only resigned. It didn’t matter. They had reached that hour of the night where you could only tell the truth, however much it would ache in the morning. ‘Trowa,’ he murmured.

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t be angry with him for not being here. I’m not.’

‘I don’t know what you see in him. I really don’t. I think you’re wasting a lot of love.’

Quatre winced at that. ‘I didn’t know. You really don’t like him.’

There was a long, thoughtful quiet at that. Duo huffed a little and said, ‘I respect him.’

‘Do you?’ Quatre wondered. Probably not for the same things Quatre did. Quite possibly Duo was thinking of things Quatre knew nothing about. In the end, Duo knew almost as much about Trowa as Quatre did, which, in all honesty, wasn’t all that much. Quatre closed his eyes, draped his arm over his forehead. With the weight of it pressing there, he said, ‘You’re worried that I idolise him, or something. That I think he’s some... wounded baby bird that I’m trying to rescue.’

There was a tinge of reproach in the spring air. The curtains waved gently in the corner of his vision, a flicker of lace and cream. ‘Aren’t you?’ Duo whispered.

He pressed harder with his arm, then let it drop back to his side. ‘I think I was the bird. I don’t know. I wish I could show you what he was like the first time I met him. Just fearless. He surrendered to me, without ever giving up a damn thing. He made me feel like a supplicant.’ He thought back to those days in the desert of the Sudan, a very long time ago now, days that had taken on a rosy quality. A wistful little bleed. ‘I thought he resented me because of all my nice things. I would have given him any of it. All of it. None of it mattered to me, but it always seemed to matter to him, in this nagging little way. We were so– young. It’s like I can see exactly how it should have gone, exactly the path I could have taken to make him happy, but...’

‘All that guilt must get pretty heavy,’ Duo muttered cynically.

It prompted a grin from Quatre, though a sheepish one. The fan rotated overhead, soundlessly. ‘You’re a one-note instrument, my friend.’

‘Do you ever want to go back to Space?’

He gave that deep thought, though the answer that had leapt immediately to his lips was the same answer he came up with some minutes later. ‘Desperately,’ he said, and his throat felt close and tight, and there was wet heat in his eyes. He waited for it to go away. ‘But I can’t. Not yet. Too much happened there. I did horrible things there.’

‘Zero,’ Duo guessed.

‘Not just Zero.’ He made himself swallow. ‘Zero is a lot of it. But Zero didn’t make the hate in me.’

‘You attacked Trowa while you were using Zero,’ Duo said. It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t, and Quatre didn’t know how he was expected to answer. There was no shifting at all in the other bed, but he could feel Duo’s agitation, a steady burn of current between them.

‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘He jettisoned. He was almost out of air when they found him. The Sweepers. Heero kept me from going after him, even after I... realised what I’d done.’

‘Do you know what they were doing out there? Why they were there when you attacked the colony?’

Quatre opened his mouth, but had nothing to say. He didn’t know. Not really.

‘He was forcing Heero to test the Mercurius. He was hip-deep in his cover. If they’d told him to, do you think he wouldn’t have killed Heero? You know he would have. You know what he did to my partner.’

Deathscythe. All these years later, and it still hurt Duo to say the name of a dead comrade.

‘He was doing the best he knew how to do,’ Quatre said. ‘None of us got out without mistakes. It was just us five. We were only kids. What did any of us know?’

‘Yeah?’ Duo’s low voice had bitterness in it, and Quatre felt ashamed hearing it, wishing he knew how to erase it, how to replace it with the things men their age were supposed to feel, things that didn’t scar so deep. ‘Trowa doesn’t have a problem going back into Space.’

He couldn’t heal with a touch. He couldn’t make it vanish by waving money at it. He wished he could. He lay there, aching for Duo, for the part of himself that agreed.

 

**

 

Trowa fired, registering the kick-back of his Colt and the impact to his assailant in precise order. The beer-bellied security guard hit the ground with a moan, clutching his thigh where red began to spurt from an artery as if from a hose. Trowa watched him bleed and writhe for a moment, trying to decide whether to help him or let him die. The guard’s companion, who had thrown up his hands in surrender when Trowa and Martinez broke into the room, looked between them, grown pale and frightened.

‘Move on,’ Trowa told Martinez, his decision made only seconds later. ‘I’ll secure these two and follow.’

Angelina Martinez nodded her acceptance, and backed out of the rec room, her rifle at ready and her footsteps making less noise than a breeze. Trowa crouched beside the man he’d shot, keeping his Colt on the one in the corner, behind the small dining table littered with the remains of a late-night snack. Careful to keep his boots far from the edge of the spreading pool of blood his bullet had created, Trowa popped the snap of the dying man’s holster, and drew out the guard’s Kahr MK40. He slipped it into an inside pocket, and rose from his crouch. He motioned the unharmed guard into a corner, and followed him with a pair of Preventers-issue handcuffs. He secured the older man to the radiator along the wall, hands behind his back and laced through the piping. He relieved the guard of his weapon, and turned back to the one on the floor.

Bleeding out. Trowa stared at him for a moment, and said, ‘For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry.’ He aimed again, ignoring the plea from behind him and the wheeze from below, and fired a second shot.

He walked out without looking back at the rec room’s single living occupant.

 

**

 

They didn’t talk again until, sometime a little longer into the night, the hurt faded off into weary. Quatre replayed those old battles in the flinders they came in, making no effort to direct the flow of his broken memories of that age. Waiting for the anger time to pass. When it felt safe and companionable once again, he asked the dark blob of the wainscoted ceiling, ‘Do you ever think about what happened to Heero?’

Duo’s soft sigh was his answer. ‘I try not to,’ the other man admitted. ‘But yeah.’

‘Me, too.’

The silences between them were getting longer. They were both tired. But Quatre could hear the impulse, the pained hope, when Duo suddenly added, ‘Do you think he’s dead?’

‘No,’ Quatre told him confidently, an assurance that felt more absolute in the dark of night than it often did during the day. ‘I would know.’

‘How?’

He squirmed onto his side, creating a little pull and pain in his chest, stuffing one of the limp down pillows a little under his ribs. He thought about how to explain for a long time before he did. ‘During the war,’ he said. ‘The wars. I felt... connected. To Heero. From practically the first time I saw him. I think it was New Edwards. I’m not sure anymore. But it was always him.’

He thought the silence this time was Duo digesting that. ‘I like to think that he’s out there. Living a normal life. Being happy. Being a nobody.’ Another long patch of quiet. ‘I used to think, he’s like what I would have felt if I were in OZ and I met Khushrenada. You know? The centre of it. Like he was...’

‘Like he made it so you could keep believing what you need to believe,’ Quatre finished. ‘Like he was– an epitome, or something. Everything you wanted to save and everything that was wrong, all wrapped up in a boy-warrior who could do anything.’

The blurry green display of the alarm clock showed three-twenty-six. Quatre looked at it for a long time before it resolved into any kind of sense, and realised he was sleepy.

‘Did you love him?’ he asked softly.

The almost-sigh of the sheets on skin floated through the room. ‘Not like you mean,’ Duo said. ‘I’m not gay.’

‘I know.’ Quatre stared at the opposite bed. ‘I just thought... I don’t know. You and Heero, you had something. Chemistry, I guess.’

‘I think maybe I just understood him.’

Understood him. Not got him; not wanted him; just accepted and cherished him for what he was, sullen, lethal, damaged. Duo was good at understanding. Quatre wished he had half of Duo’s gift for it– didn’t know he’d said that aloud until Duo chuckled.

‘You’ve got your own thing,’ his friend told him in torpid contentment.

When Quatre thought to say ‘Good night,’ Duo was already asleep.

 

**

 

Trowa felt the vibration of his comm at his hip, and released it from its clip on his belt. ‘Barton,’ he said into its tiny microphone.

‘We’re secured,’ Wufei reported. ‘Ready for release.’

Cameron and Kozlova arrived in the corridor in time to hear that. They wore identical grins.

‘Copy,’ Trowa said into his comm. He thumbed a second frequency, and said, ‘Report, Pryce.’

‘Transport ready, Captain.’

He slipped the comm back to his belt, and nodded to the two soldiers who had joined him. ‘Join Pryce outside with the van. We’re ready to go.’ Both saluted– Trowa reflected he could learn to hate that– and took off down the corridor at a jog. Trowa fingered his comm, his one worry about the op returning full-force. Catalonia hadn’t reported in yet.

He had just convinced himself to go looking for her when she appeared behind him. Her cap was crooked, long golden hairs escaping it. She’d removed it. He was suddenly furious with her carelessness, and it took a great deal of effort to keep himself from snapping at her. She seemed to see his internal struggle, and her wide eyes mocked him. Dared him.

‘Message sent,’ she told him archly. ‘Shall I tell Chang, or would you rather surprise him?’

He eased his hand away from its grip on his holstered Colt. ‘He’ll see it with the rest of them,’ he muttered. ‘Time to retreat, Catalonia.’

But she didn’t. Instead, she leaned into him, close enough that he could smell sweat and excitement on her. She whispered, ‘I’ve followed better men than you, Barton; but I have to wonder– if we would have won, Zechs and I, if you had lead instead of him.’

She stared up at him, and he met her gaze without flinching. ‘I don’t wonder,’ he told her flatly. He stepped back deliberately, and turned his back on her. ‘I know,’ he added, as he walked away.

Mariemaia Barton sat in a place of honour on packing crates draped with blankets inside the large, black Preventer van that Wufei had appropriated for their operation. When Trowa swung into the back and fell into a squat not far from her, she favoured him with a small, tense smile.

‘You have my thanks,’ she informed him quietly. ‘You’ve done well tonight.’

‘This is only the beginning,’ he corrected her, palming his Colt and replacing the half-empty clip with a full one. ‘Keep your thanks until we’re out of the parking lot, at least.’

Wufei knocked on the plastic partition separating the cab from the van’s eleven passengers. ‘Ready?’ he called.

Catalonia appeared at the van doors that instant, leaping light-footed onto the bed and pulling the doors closed behind her. ‘We’re go, Captain,’ she said.

Wufei heard, and had the engine on in an instant. Martinez reached out to steady Mariemaia as they jolted forward, into a wide turn. Trowa concentrated on the feel of acceleration beneath the soles of his boots, waiting for them to hit an acceptable velocity. When he judged them to be out of the lot and well away from the prison, he sought Dorothy’s eyes in the dark. When their gazes met, he nodded once.

She held up a detonator, and pressed the button.

The explosion was massive enough that they heard it even from the highway. Wufei, at the wheel, swerved abruptly. Voices erupted about Trowa, as each soldier demanded what had happened, some even scrambling unwisely to peer out of the tinted windows.

‘What was that?’ Wufei demanded. ‘Barton!’

But it was Mariemaia who caught his eyes this time. She was smiling. She adjusted the lay of her blazer, and rested her hands on her unfeeling legs.

‘It is begun,’ she said calmly.

 

**

 

Quatre woke up.

A soft sigh from his left told him that Duo was still asleep. He rolled his head to look, waiting until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Duo’s face resolved into a pale half-moon of flesh, eventually separating into gentle shadows of eyes, nose, lips. The almost-silent breathing from the other bed was a comforting rhythm.

Quatre eased his covers aside, and slipped out of the bed. He was vaguely proud of his stealth as he padded quick-footed to the bathroom, to collect a still-damp wetsuit from its drape over the sink. The sitting room was warmer than the bedroom, though a little breeze tickled him as he passed the open windows. He snagged a bottle of water from the bar, and turned back to look at the bedroom.

Duo had never so much as stirred. Quatre grinned to himself, and left their rooms.

The lobby was curiously empty, but the ornate bronze clock above the desk showed it was half-five. It was nothing to walk right out the back doors onto the deck, and from there to the beach. He hesitated for a moment there, at the edge of the hotel’s bright lights, facing the chill black expanse of the ocean. The only sound was the distant roar of waves on the jetty, slapping against the dock hundreds of yards away. It was like standing inside the hollow thunder of a conch shell.

He turned to his right, and angled himself so that soon he was walking in damp sand at the edge of the tide, but progressing further and further away from the hotel, the docks, and the marina. He had never walked in this direction before, had no idea where the curve of the shore would take him. When he thought to glance behind to see how far he had gone, he was surprised to discover the hotel had shrunk to a tiny star-like perch in the night.

A long, bright series of clicks ending on a whistle split the air. Quatre grinned, and stopped walking. A moment later, on the tail of a second penny-whistle screech, a silvery fin topped water, and then a dolphin leapt from the surf, crashing down with a squeal that was like audible joy.

Quatre worked quickly, stripping his pajamas and climbing into the suit, zipping it up to his throat. He kicked his clothes far enough up the sand that he might be able to find them again, and stood shivering in the ocean-cold air. Then he shuffled his bare feet on the sand, and waded into the water. It was still chilly, despite the fine spring weather. When it hit his knees he began to wish he’d bought a full-body suit. His toes were tingling when he reached waist-deep. But he reached out his hands and waited, rocking with the force of waves lapping about his body.

A huge head broke the water and butted his hands. Quatre laughed aloud when a blunt nose rubbed his belly. Even without the moon, he could see the long grey birthmark. It was Albert.

He kept one hand on Albert’s rubbery hide, and followed him deeper into the water. He gripped tight to the juncture of Albert’s fin just before his feet slipped free of the murky bottom. Manoeuvring himself about to sling an arm across Albert’s broad back, he pressed his cheek to the dolphin’s warm body. He made no attempt to control their direction, knowing Albert would never allow him to be hurt.

He didn’t look back as they left shallow water.


	12. Twelve

Duo was in the lobby when Quatre entered it. His friend stood at the desk, his posture aggressive and his hands rather threateningly close to the morning concierge. Quatre grabbed an orange from the stand by the doors, nodded to one of the cleaners hastily hiding her cart in a service hall, and crossed the floor. He hadn’t noticed before how plush the carpet was; it felt wonderful under bare feet rubbed a little raw by sand. He thought idly of sneaking up behind Duo and tapping him on the shoulder, or something, but Duo was far more alert today than he had been the night before, and whirled about with Quatre still ten feet away.

The relief on Duo’s face made him feel badly. It hadn’t really crossed his mind what Duo would do, waking up to find his convalescing roommate missing. He was answered a moment later when he was swept up into a fierce hug. He wrapped his own arms around Duo’s back, and whispered against Duo’s ear, ‘I’m so sorry.’

To his surprise Duo’s shoulders slumped. ‘Damn it,’ Duo grumbled. ‘I was all set to be pissed at you this morning.’

He laughed, and squeezed gently before he let Duo go. ‘How about just through breakfast?’

Duo was not even bothering to hide the evaluating expression in his eyes as he checked Quatre with a very careful look, head to toe and back up again. ‘Promise me you didn’t hurt yourself.’

‘Actually,’ Quatre told him, ‘I feel great. Better than I have in a really long time, Duo.’

Duo sighed. Then he slung his arm over Quatre’s shoulder, and walked him toward the dining room. ‘Buy me breakfast, hot shot,’ he said. ‘And don’t you dare ever sneak out on me again. I almost called out a copter.’ He paused, and looked him over again. ‘Where are your pajamas?’

Quatre clapped his hand over his mouth. ‘Oh no,’ he mumbled. ‘I forgot all about them.’ He glanced out the windows, and groaned. ‘High tide!’

His dismay kicked Duo into a grin, then a laugh. ‘Breakfast, and then shopping,’ he guessed. They descended the few steps to the dining portico, already golden with sunlight and sparkling plateware. Duo picked an unoccupied table at random, and insisted on holding Quatre’s chair for him as he settled into the wicker seat. A moment later Duo was propping his back with an extra seat cushion. Quatre let him fuss, understanding his friend needed to make up for having let him sneak out in the first place, but he did wave off an offer to get an ice pack for his chest.

‘I really am fine,’ he swore. ‘I just went swimming.’

‘In the middle of the bleeding night,’ Duo muttered, dropping into his own seat. ‘I almost had a heart attack when I–‘ Suddenly, unaccountably, he turned a deep red, and his fingers fluttered about the edge of his place mat. ‘That is– I was–‘

It occurred to Quatre rather late in that stumbling sentence just what had triggered Duo’s look of criminal guilt. He hid a smile by reaching for his sweating water glass and sipping from it. Then he dipped his fingers into the water, and flicked it at Duo’s face. He got a flinch and a blink for his effort. ‘Calm down,’ he advised. ‘I’m not offended, I’m not hurt, but I am starving. Let’s order something. A lot of something.’ He looked about, and found a waiter standing at the ready with their menus. He gestured, and the young man trotted across the portico to serve them.

Duo immediately buried his flushed face in his menu, emerging just long enough to order cereal and a fruit plate. Quatre, feeling adventurous, ordered a tortilla de Sacremonte. Then he remembered that Trowa had liked the chocolate churros in the one quick meal they’d eaten together here, so he ordered that as well. It wasn’t often that he indulged his own whimsies, and he felt mildly proud of himself for doing so.

Duo was back to normal by the time they had their juice and coffees. ‘I don’t know if you remember,’ he said, unfolding his napkin and dropping it into his lap. ‘Today is the first broadcast from the IEO.’

‘I completely forgot!’ Quatre exclaimed. ‘Thank you so much for reminding me, I would have hated to miss it.’ He twisted about in his chair, looking for video sets. ‘Do you think we can watch it out here?’

‘If you asked them to install a satellite on the roof for you I think they’d have it done yesterday,’ Duo grinned. ‘I asked when we got in, actually. We’ll have enough time to eat before it starts, and then we can sit at the bar.’

‘I can’t believe I forgot about it,’ Quatre complained, planting his elbows on the table, not caring if it was rude. ‘I’m such a bastard.’

Duo’s snicker turned into a genuine laugh. ‘Eat everything on your plate and I’ll even let you talk my ear off all day about the crew.’

With that incentive, Quatre had no problem finishing his meal, and to Duo’s amusement he could barely contain his excitement as they switched to the shaded bar that ran the inside edge of the portico. Quatre picked at the now-dry hem of his wetsuit, drummed his fingers on the counter, and kicked at the footrail with his bare toes until the bartender brought him banana chips just to keep him busy. Precisely at nine, the morning talk-show ended, and an announcer wearing a hoodie with the official IEO patch appeared on screen, standing on a beach somewhere with a gentle breeze blowing his hair back from his bald spot.

 _‘Good morning, Earth and Colonies,’_ the announcer said. Duo patted Quatre’s bouncing knee, and Quatre spared him a quick smile before riveting his eyes back to the screen above their heads. _‘I’m Douglas Andrews from the Douglas Andrews Daily Report Channel 18. It is my very great pleasure to be bringing you this unique and exciting ‘first’– our first report from the International Exploration Operation that launched from Costa Dorada, Spain five weeks ago.’_

Andrews began to walk down the beach, and Quatre tamped hard on his impatience as the man began a brief history of the IEO, complete with cuts to blueprints and photographs. _‘The IEO is the largest ocean-faring science vessel ever built. It contains eighteen laboratories divided between ‘wet’ and ‘dry,’ has six manned underwater subs for diving exploration, and three unmanned subs with state-of-the-art video and computer equipment, capable of diving more than two miles to the ocean floor. The men and women of the IEO are top scientists engaged in research that has a wide range of practical applications, from medicine to technology to marine viability. Today we will speaking with Doctor Kathleen Ehrlich, the IEO’s Chief Biologist. All around the world and in Space, classrooms of children from ages five to twenty are standing by with questions to ask Doctor Ehrlich and her science team. Ladies and gentlemen, the International Exploration Operation.’_

Quatre discovered he was gripping the bar so tightly his fingers had gone a little numb. He wished with sudden aching fierceness that he could have been there for this. They were his people, and he’d meant to be there to share in the first triumphant presentation of their hard work. To be stuck in the audience instead of on the ship he’d begun to think of as home– it hit him with devastating force just then. But then Duo’s hand was on his knee again, gripping, and when their eyes met, Quatre saw that his friend understood.

The video had cut to a split-screen of Ehrlich standing in the wet lab, looking spruce in her white IEO polo. She stood with nervously squared shoulders facing the screen, her hands latched in front of her as she listened attentively to the first question, read by an English school-girl who couldn’t have been older than seven. The little girl was round-cheeked and dark-skinned, her dark hair in plump braids. She was saying, _‘We read that there are mountains and volcanoes under the sea?’_

Ehrlich nodded, unclasping her hands and then gripping them tightly together again. ‘ _That’s true,’_ she answered, almost steadily. _‘In fact nearly ninety percent of all volcanic activity happens under the water. The most clumped together are in the South Pacific Ocean where there are more than fifteen hundred. That’s where the one they named after President Silei erupted six years ago. Your teacher can tell you all about that.’_

‘This is great,’ Quatre murmured. ‘This is exactly what I wanted.’

The next question came from L2, and Quatre was struck by the poignant unsuitability of the classroom being linked via satellite to the whole of humanity. Children crammed into too few desks in a room of crumbling, stained plaster, their uniforms ill-fitting and their faces clearly pinched and thin. But the young man who stood before the vid’ recorder with his notecard clutched between small hands and a dark blush on his cheeks had the same excitement as the healthy, happy girl before him; his eyes shone with it as he read, quickly but unevenly, from his prompt.

 _‘Our teacher says that ocean water has th– thirty-five thousand parts per million of salt,’_ he stumbled on gamely. _‘But also that lots of salt is bad for humans. So ocean scientists have to measure it very carefully. What I want to know is that all the water we get on L2 comes from the ocean, so how do we know that it’s all right to drink?’_

‘It wasn’t always,’ Duo muttered next to him.

 _‘That’s a very good question,’_ Ehrlich said, and cleared her throat. _‘On Earth we use many different methods for desalinating– for removing the salt from water to make it drinkable. Right now we have fourteen plants throughout the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans which use a method called ‘reverse osmosis.’ It removes all the salt and other contaminants– we call that ‘distillation’– and then we test it very carefully to be sure that it’s safe for people.’_ She drew a deep breath. _‘If you look at our site on the net, there’s an experiment there that you can do to see how it works for yourself. Desalinisation is not a new technology. People have been doing it for thousands of years. And if you send us pictures of your class doing the experiment, then we’ll send each of you a certificate, and a cap with the IEO logo.’_ She touched the patch over her breast. _‘The world always needs new scientists!’_

Quatre was so busy grinning at her effort to be approachable, and the obvious excitement in the L2 classroom that greeted news of a reward, that he didn’t notice the presence of their waiter from earlier until the man was already stepping away. He glanced at Duo, and saw him bent over a note.

Duo’s head snapped up, his braid losing its purchase on his shoulder and slipping off to swing at his back. ‘Shit,’ he cussed loudly. He crumpled the paper in his fist.

‘What is it?’ Quatre asked him, startled.

‘Shit,’ Duo said again. ‘Just– watch your programme. I’ll be right back.’

‘Wait, tell me what’s wrong.’

Duo was already standing, his eyes furious. But he stopped long enough to look down at Quatre, chewing on his lip. Then suddenly he leaned forward, until his breath was hot against Quatre’s ear. ‘Mariemaia Khushrenada has been broken out of her prison,’ he whispered, just barely loud enough to be heard.

Quatre stared at him. ‘By whom?’ he demanded.

Duo smashed his hand to the bar, crushing the note beneath it. ‘Preventers,’ he bit out, and turned away.

Quatre glanced back at the television, where Ehrlich was sharing space with an Indian schoolboy. Then he slid off his stool, and hurried after Duo.

He caught up to his friend in the confines of their suite, where Duo was already on the ‘vid, shouting to be heard as he rooted through their luggage in the bedroom. Quatre nodded to the woman on the screen, vaguely recognising her as someone from Preventers HQ, and slipped past her to the bathroom. He shut the door firmly, not sure if it was visible from the angle of the ‘vid, and stripped into the shower. He bathed quickly, wrapped himself in a robe, and made a dash from the bathroom to the bedroom. As he dressed he found he had unconsciously chosen clothes that reminded him of the war– a pair of khaki trousers, stretchy and durable, and a cotton shirt with long protective sleeves and a high collar. He added a grey wool waistcoat for warmth, and walked back into the sitting room, wondering if Duo would only ask him to leave again.

But Duo only greeted him with a distracted smile. ‘There’s footage,’ he explained shortly, as Quatre sat on the couch next to him. ‘Sally’s connecting me. Whoever they were, they wanted to be seen.’

‘Do you have names yet?’ Quatre asked.

‘HQ have been compiling time sheets and stations. It could be a while before we identify them. There’s more than a thousand people to account for, and another hundred on inactive duty.’

There were, Quatre realised suddenly, a great many things he didn’t know about Duo’s job. When the Eve War had ended, he’d been offered a position in the infant organisation that was the Preventers, but by then he’d been deeply involved with WEI and had the beginnings of an adult life carved out for himself. He had consulted with his sisters, as well as with Duo, Trowa, and Wufei, and come to the conclusion that he was at last in the right time and place to fulfil his father’s wishes, and take on the obligations he’d been born for. Destroying his Gundam had been, for Quatre, the end of an era. The end of his youth, and the freedom to act on his own behalf. He’d regretted it strongly, doubted his decision daily for almost a year; he’d been so used to the pain that he’d simply refused to learn anything about what he was missing, what he was failing to do. And perhaps Duo and Wufei, who had both accepted positions with the Preventers, had understood him better than he did himself, because outside of amusing anecdotes about mutual friends, they almost never told him anything about the operations which consumed their daily life.

Quatre sat on the couch feeling like a bad soldier, and a horrible friend.

 _‘Ready for the show?’_ the woman on the ‘vid asked suddenly. _‘I’m connecting you now.’_

She switched immediately to the recording. It had the greenish, grainy look of a security camera. They were facing what looked like a main security desk in a lobby, from a high angle, probably the ceiling, seven or eight feet from the two men who sat at the desk, talking idly. The time signature in the corner showed it to be fourteen minutes past ten in the evening.

From somewhere beyond the camera, a group of people who were undeniably Preventers entered the view. One of the guards stood quickly, his mouth moving silently. One of the Preventers stepped forward, obligingly showing a badge. His back was to the camera, which was providing an excellent view of the top of his head, covered in a black beanie. All the Preventers– Quatre counted twelve– wore combat gear.

The guard wasn’t accepting the ID. He handed it to his partner, who keyed a code in one of the computers. The lead Preventer drew a gun, and all his men immediately followed suit. Within just a few moments, they had pinned the two guards to the wall and were cuffing them there. One stayed on watch, while the leader divided the rest and sent them off beyond the camera range.

They cut to a new room. A recreation room, crammed with a small dining table, a microwave and a refrigerator. Two guards on break there were assaulted by one of the splinter groups of renegade Preventers. Quatre flinched when one of the masked men shot a guard; he felt vaguely ill when he watched the execution that followed a minute later.

Another cut. A split-screen view, two angles on a single room. A bedroom, Quatre thought at first, but then saw the bars on the single window and the electronic locks on the steel door. A girl no more than ten or twelve sat at a little vanity, reading a book. Mariemaia Khushrenada, he recognised, her silent form composed, slender, oddly out of place in her grim surroundings. As if she were meant for parade grounds, for a throne. For a uniform. Though he had fought a war against her, he had never seen her in person, and it was something shocking to see her there on the screen.

Sparks flew from the door, grey in the camera lense, and then it was wrenched open. Three black-clad Preventers poured into the room, P226 pistols roving the room before settling into ‘ready’ positions against the chests of their owners. The leader of this splinter stepped toward Mariemaia, and snapped a salute. She nodded gravely to him, but didn’t stand. She was not surprised to see him there, Quatre noted. He watched the Preventers cooperate in a sturdy fireman’s carry, two of them taking the little girl while the leader covered their retreat from the room.

‘She can’t walk,’ Duo told him. ‘I don’t know if you knew that. Dekim Barton shot her when it was all falling to pieces. It severed her spine.’

‘I thought Heero shot her.’

Duo offered a crooked, unhappy smile. ‘He thought he did. I didn’t find out the truth until after he’d already disappeared. Lady Une and the Vice-Minister saw the whole thing.’

‘And didn’t think to tell him?’

‘I guess they didn’t realise he didn’t know.’

‘That’s sad,’ Quatre whispered. Duo only nodded, his eyes dark.

Another room. This, Quatre surmised, was the network base of the prison. It had the look of a heavily fortified office. But it too held only three guards, and it finally occurred to Quatre that the hit had been timed for the skeleton crew. He checked the time signature, and it showed only six minutes had passed from the first recording. It had been done quickly, so fast that those in the network base were only just starting to realise something was wrong. When the door flew open, one managed to fire a few shots with his weapon, but he went down in a spurt of grey gore a second later. The other two never made it to their feet; they slumped dead over their desks.

Only a single Preventer entered this frame. Unlike the others, this one came straight to the camera, reaching up a gloved hand to turn it down for a better view. The automatic focus adjusted to show an aristocratic mouth and a slender, aquiline nose, and topping that, a pair of wide, long-lashed eyes.

Quatre stared, stunned. ‘I know her!’ he blurted.

Duo whirled on him. ‘What?’

‘I know her,’ he repeated. ‘That’s Dorothy Catalonia.’ He had dreamed about her only the night before, though he hadn’t truly thought of her in a long time. The woman who had nearly killed him aboard the Libra was unmistakably the same as the one now removing her black cap. When a tail of thick pale hair fell to her shoulder, he felt a sympathetic throb in his stomach.

She replaced her beanie with a beret. Though the security camera did not supply its colouration or texture, its brass badge was clear as day. It was a stylised “M.” Dorothy perched it at a rakish angle on her head.

‘Are you sure it’s Dorothy Catalonia?’ Duo demanded, pulling the ‘vid closer to the couch and typing quickly on the keyboard. In the corner of the screen a search window appeared, the Preventer logo running the taskbar. It flickered once, and returned a fast scroll of information. ‘She’s living in Austria. She was Treize’s cousin– it looks like she inherited his entire estate. Why would she support someone claiming to be his daughter? She’d lose everything.’

‘She’d go anywhere for a war,’ Quatre murmured, watching the play of mischief and malice in her face. ‘She believes it’s the height of human potential for greatness.’

‘In other words, she’s as nuts as her cousins,’ Duo muttered in retort. ‘Her place has been abandoned. Completely. A week ago everything was normal– the local police put in a notice about it, when the whole place turned up empty.’

She tossed the beret onto the desk, beside one of the bodies. She did not look back as she left the room. The camera continued to record for another ninety seconds, when it suddenly fizzled, and went dark.

The face of the Preventer Duo was talking to replaced the dead feed. _‘They blew the compound behind them,’_ she explained crisply. _‘Two survivors– the ones in the lobby. Another eight dead. And Khushrenada gone. This is what we’ve pieced together. We also have a black van in the parking lot. It’s one of ours, but the Ukranians say it wasn’t from their division.’_

‘We have a lead,’ Duo reported. ‘Quatre recognised the woman. Dorothy Catalonia.’

 _‘Dorothy?’_ The woman blinked. _‘I’ll tell Noin,’_ she added a moment later. _‘She knew Dorothy.’_

‘Is Miss Noin back with the Preventers?’ Quatre asked, a little shy of interrupting. ‘I thought she was on Mars with Zechs Merquise.’

 _‘She consults regularly,’_ the woman replied. _‘Considering how hard both of them fought three years ago to put down the Barton Rebellion, I think they’ll be interested in coming on board for this disaster.’_

‘We know they weren’t really Preventers, at least,’ Duo said, sounding relieved. ‘I’d like to know where they got the uniforms and weapons.’

 _‘We’re operating on the assumption that at least some of them are renegades until we can prove otherwise,’_ the woman disagreed. _‘Lady Une is meeting with the President in half an hour. You can bet that’s what Brussels will assume. He’ll use it to disqualify us from investigating the break-out.’_

‘Bullshit,’ Duo spat, and Quatre was inclined to agree. ‘He can run an inquest when this is over. I’d lay odds we’ll be getting a list of demands within in the next twenty-six. We can just pray they don’t have access to any colonies, this time!’

 _‘You’re not alone in your indignation,’_ she assured him, a glint of amusement in her smirk. Then she turned serious. _‘I hate to cut your holiday short, but as senior agents, we’re going to be in on this. I’m going to order you a flight out of the nearest facility.’_

‘I’ll be ready in an hour,’ Duo promised.

‘Yes, we will,’ Quatre said. He pretended not to notice the shock in the woman’s face, or Duo’s uncertainty, as he stood, brushing wrinkles from his trousers. ‘I’ll pack,’ he told Duo. ‘You take care of the rest.’ He retreated to the bedroom, deliberately not listening to the carefully soft exchange that began as soon as he was out of the sitting area. He packed Duo’s bag first, leaving the weapons holsters and Duo’s cache of small arms on his double bed, as well as his uniform shirt and jacket. He exchanged his waistcoat for something that looked at least vaguely official, a coat of dark brown leather, and chose his hiking boots rather than the trainers he’d been wearing for their easy walking. He hadn’t owned a gun in three years and couldn’t remember if he’d let his license lapse.

Then he caught himself, and had to draw a deep breath. ‘I’m not a soldier,’ he murmured, rubbing a hand over the ten-inch scar between his nipples and trailing to the end of his sternum, and the twin bumps from the drainage tubes below it. It was still quite tender to the touch, the lumps where the stitched skin and muscle was beginning to grow back together. He moved his hand lower, brushing his fingertips over the depressed, thick tissue that covered the quadrangular wound, no wider than his fingertip, just left of his navel.

‘Quatre,’ Duo said softly.

Quatre dropped his hand quickly from inside his shirt, turning around. ‘You’re all ready,’ he said, a beat too late to be natural. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine here. Maybe Iraia can come after all.’

Confusion collected around Duo’s eyes. ‘Thought you were coming?’

‘I– I didn’t realise how rude I was being. I just jumped in there. I know it’s not my place. I’m sorry.’

Duo cocked his head, frowning. Then he sighed. ‘If there’s anyone I’d rather have at my back than you, I have yet to meet the son of a bitch,’ he said with a strange– fondness? Affection?– in his voice. Then he grinned, the crooked clever grin that brought back everything Quatre remembered of a boy in a priest’s collar and a Gundam called Deathscythe. ‘Let’s get our asses to the airport,’ he added. ‘We’ll beat the plane, but I can brief you on Operation M.’

Quatre couldn’t contain a sudden snicker. ‘You’re not serious.’

‘Who do you think suggested it?’ Duo came to the bed and began to unbutton his shirt. His face was solemn when he looked up at Quatre. ‘You have just as much right in this as me and Sally,’ he said. ‘I made it clear to her and I’m making it clear to you.’

He wanted to embrace Duo, or kiss him on the cheek. It wasn’t an urge he had very often, but it hit him strongly now, and he discovered he was blushing from it. He confined himself to a small smile, and went back to the bathroom to gather their toiletries. He listened to the quiet sounds of Duo changing as he gathered shampoos and shaving razors and toothbrushes. He was turning with his hands full to leave when he remembered the sleeping pills and aspirin he’d stored in the cabinet over the sink. He didn’t quite manage to juggle correctly, and he lost a comb behind the vanity counter.

‘Okay?’ Duo called.

Quatre darted out to drop his armful onto his bed, and then jogged back to the bathroom. ‘Dropped something,’ he answered, and went to his hands and knees to peer under the counter. It was old-fashioned wood and marble and it stood on gold lions’ claws, just high enough that he could stretch an arm under it and brush the comb with the tips of his fingers. In the end, he had to set a shoulder against the counter and shove it out from the wall. He was surprised to find a scattering of pills there.

‘My pills,’ he said aloud, recognising them instantly as the same that he’d taken all his life. But his amazement disappeared when he remembered that the staff had been insistent that he take the same suit he’d praised so much on his first trip. He’d probably dropped them then, and no-one had moved the counter to notice in the weeks since. He scooped them up, as well as the comb, and nudged the counter back into place.

Had his pills had that little ‘I’ on the front?

He went back into the bedroom to hand Duo his comb, gazing down at the little blue and white pills. He put them on the bedspread, turning them all to the same face to see the monograms. Then he reached for his duffle, packed on the ship a week ago and barely touched since, and found the bottle of propanolol that he’d been using on the ship, that had turned out to be nothing more than placebos.

They didn’t have the ‘I.’ ‘Odd,’ he said.

‘What’s odd?’ Duo came away from the mirror adjusting his tie. ‘Why do you still have those?’

‘Never threw them away.’ Quatre held up one from the bottle and one from behind the counter. ‘They’re different.’

Duo’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘They must have really messed up, at that pharmacy where you got them.’

‘But wouldn’t you think the chemist would notice something like that? I mean, if you look at something all the time, don’t you notice those things?’ Duo only shrugged, and clipped his badge to his belt. Quatre took the hint, and stowed both the bottle and the pills he’d found for examination later. After all, it was a moot point now. He went to the ‘vid to ask for a porter to get their luggage, and put everything but Operation M out of his mind.


	13. Thirteen

It was mid-afternoon when Duo stepped out of their taxi and flashed his badge at the uniformed Preventer who had come to shoo the cab away. Instantly the Preventer’s demeanor changed, and he snapped a crisp salute instead as Duo turned back to offer Quatre a hand out. Quatre grasped his arm just below the elbow, and levered himself off the seat and out the small door, biting back a groan as he did. Then he saw the Preventer, and flushed.

‘Agent Maxwell, Mr Winner,’ the man was greeting them. ‘We’ve been expecting you. Director Une has asked you to go straight to her office.’

‘Thanks, Jorge,’ Duo said, cash leaving his hand for the cabbie’s and being replaced by their luggage. He hauled his and Quatre’s duffles up over his shoulder, ignoring Quatre’s instinctive protest. ‘C’mon,’ he murmured to Quatre, and jogged lightly up the stone steps. Quatre made a face after him, and followed at a sedate pace, feeling every cramp and ache produced by their short flight and long taxi drives. He didn’t want to arrive looking like he’d been hit by a truck, but it was a distinct possibility he would.

He looked up at the building as he climbed the steps. Preventers HQ was a fantastic piece of London architecture, a massive but graceful building of deeply tinted glass. It stood somewhat alone on this section of the street, blocked in by the shorter, narrow buildings of brick and stone on every side, like a Gundam dropped among Leos, Quatre thought to himself with a grin. Proclaiming its own strength and beauty and complete disregard for the unlovely, outmoded environment in which it found itself. The curve of the front, all nine storeys, was gentle and rounded into a wave of convex on the left and concave on the right, disappearing into an horizon curve on either side. Just before he passed into its shadow, he glimpsed the ancient London Bridge in the background; and then it was swallowed by HQ.

Duo was waiting for him at the top of the many steps, holding one of the glass doors open and grinning down at him from behind his black sunglasses. ‘I forgot you’ve never seen it,’ he said.

‘It’s– imposing,’ Quatre said.

‘Meant to be,’ Duo returned. ‘At least, that’s what the business who owned it before us thought. Some kind of government lobbyists, back in the day. Lined their entire mansion off hush-money from the Alliance and Romafeller. Brussels cut them off faster than you can say ‘sugar cookie.’ The next thing you know, we’ve got a ready-made HQ. Never let it be said that Brussels doesn’t know a deal when it lands at his feet.’ He held the door wider so Quatre could pass through, then followed him into the lobby– a surprisingly sunny affair, given the depth of the tint on the window walls. The carpet was the rich olive green of Preventer insignia, the inside walls a mottled French grey. It was tasteful, modern, but strict. Quatre rather liked it, and thought unfavourably of his own office, a place he most certainly did not like.

They weren’t stopped on their way to the lift, though a middle-aged man sitting at what Quatre took to be the front desk noted their entry and spoke inaudibly into a headset he wore. They rode the lift up six storeys, and exited into a realm of wide corridors paneled in walnut, olive trees arching up from deep troughs and filling the air with a tangy flavour, dim, golden light from an unknown source casting small shadows and creating an impression of warmth even in the cool office air. Quatre said, ‘I want the name of your decorator.’

Duo grinned at him, and tugged his glasses off finally. ‘I don’t know if even you can afford her.’

‘I’ll try,’ Quatre muttered, unable to resist grabbing an olive leaf as they passed one of the troughs. It was real. He sighed against a pinch of envy, and trudged after Duo.

He was distracted enough when they reached Une’s office that he looked at her tapestry curtains and wing-backed leather chair before he focused on the woman sitting in it. He’d had no personal contact with Une, as either colonel or Lady, during the Colony Wars. He could easily recall his feeling of physical shock and heartsick when she threatened to destroy a colony if they didn’t surrender their Gundams; that endless moment was overlaid with the horror of Heero’s violent self-detonation, his surety that no human being could survive such a blast and fall. The sadness of watching Trowa walk away from him for the second time, already in love and not knowing if that love would come back.

The Director Une who stood before him was the same as the woman who, three years earlier, had led a scraped-together coalition of ex-OZ, ex-White Fang, ex-Gundam pilots in an assault on the army of Dekim Barton, the mad-man who had conceived and tried twice to implement Operation Meteor. She had been a voice of cool competence over their frequency, always in control, always watchful for the opportunity to strike the victory blow. He had met her for the first time as she led a rag-tag group of survivors from the rubble of Barton’s fortified hide-away in Germany. He had been exerting his energy on Heero, once more broken and limp in the hold of the four boys who knew him best. He had looked up at her when she came to stand over him– cradling Heero’s head on his lap, stanching a scalpel-edged wound over Heero’s brow with his own fingers. She had met his eyes, nodded once, he had thought with approval and thanks. He had never seen her again, except over the ‘vid, accepting an award on behalf of all those who had fought in the Eve War, and in one message she’d left for him, offering him a job within her organisation. He had turned her down by letter.

She rose, tugging crisply at the hem of her navy blue jacket. Though he knew she was young, only in her late twenties, she carried herself with the maturity of a much older woman. Her hair was a fall of dark brown straight to her shoulders, a fringe of softer wisps framing her broad forehead and small chin. Quatre, who knew what to look for, saw the imperfect lay of her suit that meant she was carrying. Everything about her was a mix of the feminine and the soldier. It wasn’t particularly hard to picture her in an OZ uniform.

She offered him a hand, and he took it, returning her firm grip. ‘Welcome to HQ,’ she was saying to him. ‘I wish you could be here under better circumstances, Mr Winner.’

‘Quatre,’ he said automatically. ‘Thank you.’

Duo was already sitting, and though it wasn’t in him to sit while a woman was standing, Une saved him the bother by waving him to another of the plushly cushioned Venetian chairs and resuming her own seat. ‘I’ll get straight to the point, if you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘We’ve managed to identify four of the twelve people who broke into Lyaksandro Prison last night. Three of them were on our watch lists. One of them is the Duchess Dorothy Catalonia, as you noticed, Quatre. So far none have been identified as Preventers, but we have yet to rule out the possibility.’ She located a paper among the minefield on her desk, and held it out to Duo. He skimmed it twice, and passed it to Quatre, who recognised none of them.

‘Fung Yin was an officer in White Fang. She served seven months in ESA custody for assaulting and maiming an ex-OZ soldier in Shanghai two years ago. Maquinna Nootka was Alliance and seems to have originated from the L3 cluster. The Nootka tribal leader on B389A2 admitted that Maquinna left the colony abruptly a week ago, but was acting strangely for several months before that. He made the tribe nervous enough that they were considering turning him in to the colony authorities for violence. Nelson Baker from L1 colony D382X3-0 was the hardest to track. We have reason to believe he was close to Dekim Barton. He’s related by marriage to Barton’s younger sister. He’s got a rap sheet the length of my arm. The Lady Catalonia, of course, was one of the leaders of the White Fang rebellion. She’s been under watch, but since she was pardoned by the ESA for her part in the war, she’s kept under the radar.’

‘Do we have any suspicious activity in-house?’ Duo asked her.

Quatre thought that Une glanced at him before replying, but the light was behind her and he couldn’t be sure. She didn’t miss a beat. ‘We’re still awaiting check-in from seventeen agents. Three are inactive status and one is deep-cover. They will be officially considered AWOL if I don’t hear from them by twenty-two-hundred tonight.’

Duo frowned, and opened his mouth to pursue it. Quatre jumped in first, rising from his chair. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘if you could point me to the loo...’

Une nodded graciously. ‘Around the corner and to your left, third door,’ she murmured.

‘Thank you.’ He left her office quickly, shutting the door behind him and listening for the latch. Since he’d brought it up, he decided to go to the washroom anyway, though he’d only been searching for a way to leave without being obvious. Une clearly wasn’t ready to divulge sensitive information in front of him, and he didn’t want to cause a delay when he knew perfectly well they had to be on top of every aspect of this situation. Duo would fill him in on anything unclassified. He took his time about it, wandering the halls between offices a bit, trying to interest himself in the attractive red and black fixtures of the bathroom and examining the basket of soaps and lotions provided beside an arrangement of greens that featured more olive branches and smelled distinctly mediterranean and masculine.

Twelve minutes later, he knocked tentatively at Une’s door, and Duo let him in, wearing a small, grim grin. ‘All safe,’ he said. ‘You can sit down again.’

Quatre returned the smile, and resumed his seat. ‘Forgive me for asking anything inappropriate,’ he said, including both the Director and his friend, ‘but has Khushrenada issued any demands? Any statement at all?’

‘They’re quiet so far,’ Une told him. ‘Which is the part that worries me the most, honestly. It suggests that worse is coming. We have no idea where they’ve gone or what they’re planning.’

‘The two survivors from the prison– they weren’t able to tell you anything?’

‘Only that men they thought were Preventers demanded entrance, and when they were denied, took it by force.’ Une grimaced, and ran fingers through her long hair, flipping it back over her shoulder. ‘Maxwell, you and Po are in charge of the active investigation. I want all senior agents briefed and ready to march as soon as we know what direction we’re taking.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ Duo said, but there was no military correctness in his tone. Just a sober and satisfied agreement. He rose, and Quatre followed his lead from the office. When they were alone in the corridor, Duo stopped him with a light touch. Quatre faced him expectantly.

‘I’m telling you this so there are no surprises,’ Duo said seriously. ‘Our watch list is pretty long... one of the people on it is Wufei.’

‘Wufei?’ Quatre repeated, surprised. ‘Why?’ But he knew immediately. ‘That was three years ago–‘

‘But it happened,’ Duo finished. ‘And the fact that it’s Mariemaia Khushrenada who’s running about free and armed to the teeth means we have to consider him. If we don’t hear from him before tonight.’

‘He hasn’t called in?’ Quatre asked, finding a sinking feeling was developing in his gut. Duo’s eyes were unhappy as he shook his head. ‘I’m sure there’s a reason...’

‘I hope there is,’ Duo said. ‘But I’ll be ready if the reason is that he’s the one hiding her in a dark room somewhere. I just thought you should know.’

 

**

 

They’d only known each other for a few hours, but the impulse to touch was impossible to turn off. The new pilot was all lithe long lines, all simple pieces put together into something deceptively easy to overlook. The worn, pale denims, the cotton turtleneck going nubby where the harness rubbed. Brown sneakers losing the sole at an odd part of the instep; he walked differently than Quatre, in a way Quatre couldn’t quite put his finger on. And sometimes he let Quatre lead him and sometimes he just refused; but then, as if he couldn’t help himself, his hand would brush against Quatre’s, or fall to the small of Quatre’s back, to his shoulder or to his elbow. Quatre found himself reaching to take the taller boy’s hand, only to flinch back, expecting refusal– but the stranger pilot let him, and held on to his fingers when he might have backed away. They were talking, but the words had no meaning, no sound even.

Then they were in bed. It was dark, but not too dark to see. Butane torches burned on the portico outside his bedroom, spraying light through the latticework shutters over the window, warming the sandalwood breeze that played the linen curtains. The boy drew aside Quatre’s sheet as Quatre sat up to welcome him, already reaching to grasp the broad, angular shoulders, shivering to find solid muscle there. They sat facing each other on the bed, exploring again what they’d been looking at all day. Strong, long fingers moved under Quatre’s night shirt, up his ribcage, down over his stomach. Quatre lifted his arms without having to be told aloud, and the boy pulled his shirt up, over his head, trapping his arms there; then he leaned forward, slowly, and kissed his mouth through the fabric.

They laughed while they made love.

The boy kept returning to Quatre’s hair, running his fingers through it, rubbing his palms against it, brushing it down to hide his eyes then back to smooth it away. ‘It feels like silk,’ he murmured more than once, and he said that again with his mouth against Quare’s bare chest, to the inside of his knee, to the skin of his neck. The boy’s hair was coarse and thick, just like the rest of him, his firm rounded arms and his thighs and the circle of his slender waist.

_He’s sweating._

They played music together the next day, played like they’d been doing it for a decade, for a lifetime together. The day after that, as he was leaving, the boy told Quatre his name.

But maybe the magic had been in desert, in the sand that was older than anything living in Space, because it was never the same as that first perfect meeting again.

_He’s sweating. Look at the monitor!_

The lights came on, waking him out of a troubled doze. Quatre blinked into his limp pillow, then forced himself to roll onto his back so he could blink at the pretty brunette in a Preventers gym shirt who was responsible for all the brightness. He blinked more when he saw her reaching for the hem, and managed a gurgled sort of protest.

She flushed crimson when she noticed him on the couch. ‘Oh, my God,’ she exclaimed, dropping her hands and clutching her arms tight over her chest. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here!’

Quatre wiped his face, which felt suspiciously hot. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, sitting up. ‘I was napping. I think.’

‘Mr Winner?’ She’d recognised him finally. Her face was all but bursting into flame. She began to edge toward the door. ‘I’ll just tell Agent Maxwell you’re awake...’ She sucked in a deep breath, blurted, ‘I’m sorry!’ and jumped out the door, leaving him alone in the bunk room. Quatre sighed, and scrubbed hard at his eyes.

The clock above the door proclaimed it to be seven o’clock. Quatre staggered to his feet and crossed to the line of sinks along the far wall. He washed his face, scrubbed his teeth with a finger, and tried to do something about the crimp he’d put in his hair by sleeping funny. When it insisted on poofing out sideways despite his best effort, he left it with a sigh. When he returned to the bunk he’d crashed in several hours earlier, he found his shoes and socks settled neatly under the foot, and a spare shirt and jumper from his duffle laid out, still folded, over the sheet. Duo, Quatre guessed, and couldn’t help a tired smile. Duo would make an excellent mother, someday. He changed his clothes, rotating his shoulders to work out the kinks, and stuffed away the desire to bury his head in the thick brown cotton of his jumper rather than leave the bunk room to face the evening. His grumpy, growling stomach settled the matter for him, and Quatre left thinking that if he could just find food, he might survive after all.

Duo appeared at the opposite end of the open floor space devoted to the desks and cubicles of minor staff just as Quatre emerged from the bunks. His Preventer friend looked frazzled and frustrated. Quatre waved a little, and Duo strode through self-made corridors between desks to greet him.

‘Sleep well?’ he asked. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Vaguely,’ Quatre muttered, and won a bit of a laugh from Duo. ‘Do you have anything with meat in it?’

‘It is government food, so I think any answer I give you will have to be qualified.’ Duo pointed to the lift. ‘I’m ready for some chow myself. I’ll show you the cafeteria.’ He stomped off toward it so quickly that Quatre had to jog a little to catch up, but he held his tongue about it while Duo punched the call button– repeatedly.

‘Progress?’ he asked tentatively, as they entered the lift and began to move downward.

‘We’ve heard from all but three of our agents.’

‘Wufei?’

Duo didn’t answer, but that was answer enough. Quatre rubbed his stomach.

‘Stay away from anything named Salisbury,’ Duo warned him when the lift doors opened and spilled them into the cafeteria. It was modest, meant to hold perhaps two hundred people, and it gave a good impression of being full, though it was a little late for the dinner hour. A few agents waiting in queue for the buffet made way when Duo and Quatre showed up behind them, and Duo was edgy enough to accept the gesture and make his way toward the front, Quatre murmuring apologies behind him. When they reached the order counter, Duo planted his hands flat on it, leaning forward to stare at the soup canteens with suspicion.

‘Grilled cheese with bacon,’ he ordered abruptly. ‘Side of chips and a salad.’ He waited until one of the chefs began to construct his sandwich, and then gestured Quatre forward.

‘Sausage bappy,’ Quatre ordered, feeling oddly shy. ‘And... salad is fine.’ He stood silently next to Duo as their orders were completed, perhaps five minutes, and served to them on chrome trays and ceramic plates painted to look like china. Duo swerved through the crowd toward an unoccupied table sporting two high stools. Quatre followed, and took the stool Duo left him, slipping the toes of his shoes over the lower rungs. He watched Duo slather his chips with tomato sauce, then vinegar, then mayonnaise. Quatre made a face at the oily, pink mess that resulted, and concentrated on transferring his salad to his bappy bun.

‘We have two more names,’ Duo said, and took a large bite of his sandwich, making melted cheese spurt out the back of the bread. ‘Another colonial, this one from L1, and an Ozzie from South America.’ He looped the cheese about a finger, and stuck it in his mouth. When it emerged clean, he frowned at it, and dropped his sandwich to his plate. ‘They’re all junior officers, if that. Young-ish. Maquinna’s the oldest so far, and he’s only twenty-six.’

‘People who grew up with the Alliance,’ Quatre said. ‘Like us.’

Duo’s frown deepened. ‘The Alliance, and OZ. And the Resistance.’ He sighed, and pushed a chip through the sludge of sauces. ‘It means something. Either they were easier to control, or– the only thing linking them is their age and inexperience. Except for Catalonia, and you said yourself she’d go anywhere for battle. But they’re from all walks of life, from everywhere in the god-damn universe, and they fought against each other just a few years ago.’

‘There’s something else,’ Quatre said. He took a bite, thinking his way through what he wanted to say while he chewed. ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it.’ He picked a slip of rocket from his molar with his tongue. ‘Did the two you found– what’s on their records? Who are they? I mean, all of them, what kind of people are they?’

‘The kind of people who are dangerous enough to have files with the government,’ Duo said. ‘The colonies are coughing up all sorts of dirt on theirs. A lot of jail time– illegal weapons, violence, the occasional assault against the former enemy. The guy from L1 got picked up last month for chucking a brick through the window of a retired Alliance general, after emailing him death threats.’

‘So either these people are all juvies with attitude problems, or they’re– I don’t know– it’s like they’re all having trouble letting go of the wars.’

Duo blinked. ‘You’re right,’ he said. He leaned forward. ‘Jesus, you’re right, that’s what it is. They’re discontents. And whoever their ringleader is, he knew that when he recruited them. That’s what he was looking for, people with grudges, people who had a reason to pick up the fight again.’

Quatre felt a tap on his shoulder, and almost fell off his stool trying to jump out of his own skin. The woman he’d seen on the ‘vid grinned an apology at him as she pulled a third stool up to their table. ‘Sorry,’ she said. She seated herself and put down a tray of pasta and carrot cake, and presented him with a slender hand. ‘I’m Sally Po. I partner this goof you’re talking to.’

He took her hand and shook it while Duo snorted into his water glass. ‘Don’t let her fool you,’ he told Quatre lazily. ‘Despite all appearances, she’s actually pretty smart. On her good days.’

‘It’s nice to meet you,’ Quatre told her. ‘It’s always good to put a face to the name.’

‘I know the feeling.’ She eyed him with apparent appreciation that was just slightly flirtatious, and he found himself blushing like a school girl. Sally Po was an attractive woman, and she knew it, judging from her knowing laugh. Thankfully, she dropped the pose quickly, while Duo rolled his eyes in the background. ‘You could say I’ve followed your career,’ she added to Quatre. ‘I had a memorable run-in with some of your followers during the Colony Wars. The Middle Easters.’

‘The Maganac Corps,’ Quatre recalled with delight. ‘I didn’t know you’d ever met them.’

‘I tried to blow your Gundam three ways into next week,’ she admitted. ‘To stop OZ from getting their hands on it. They convinced me you might want it later.’ She dropped her chin into her palm, considering him from pretty blue eyes. ‘You did all of us proud.’

It was as well he couldn’t find his tongue after that, because Duo was making very expressive gagging noises. ‘She loves to do this to everyone,’ Duo told him. ‘Trowa turned every colour in the rainbow once when she cornered him. He walked away the same shade as that old turtleneck of his.’

Quatre fished a smile from somewhere, and managed to make it stay. ‘Green was always his colour,’ he said. Sally laughed heartily at this, and clapped him on the shoulder.

With Sally watching him surreptitiously, Duo made quick work of his sandwich and chips, ate the vegetables out of his salad, and excused himself shortly after. Quatre watched him leave, worried.

‘It’s because of Wufei,’ Sally told him, and he turned to find her eyes on him. ‘Duo doesn’t have a lot of friends. If Wufei is involved in this– it’s going to kill him.’

He sighed, and picked at a slice of sausage that had fallen from his bappy. ‘It’s getting more and more likely though, isn’t it? Or he would have checked in by now.’

The woman nodded her agreement. ‘Wufei took an assignment in Brussels a few days ago. There’s a remote chance that he’s just been busy. But every agent knows the rules. If the Director calls, you answer.’ She paused. ‘Is it just me, or are you not devastated by the possibility?’

‘I knew he was unhappy lately,’ Quatre admitted. ‘We took this mini-break a few weeks back. A month ago. He was– distant. I told him he could talk to me, and he seemed very... sad, I guess. He said he wished that were true, but if it wasn’t, then it was his fault, and not mine.’

She absorbed that. ‘Duo doesn’t know?’

‘He and Duo are so competitive. I guess I’m the one everyone talks to about crap like that.’ He smiled disparagingly. ‘Gay best friend, or something.’

‘That’s not how either of them thinks of you,’ Sally said sternly. She snorted suddenly, knocking his knee roughly with hers. ‘Duo idolises you. The first year I knew him, it was all "Quatre said this" and "Quatre did it this way." I wanted to kick your ass and I hadn’t even met you. And if Wufei can even admit to you that he’s got feelings, you’re miles ahead of the rest of us. The cadets call him the Ice Prince. And he prefers it that way.’ While he flushed and stared into his sausage hoping it might teleport him to safety, she considered him silently. She leaned toward him, forcing him to look at her.

‘Duo told me about your surgery,’ she said, and it was so far from what he’d been steeling himself for that it hit him in every vulnerable spot. ‘Don’t get angry with him,’ she added quickly. ‘I’m a doctor. He’s worried about you. He said you had a nightmare. That you dreamt you were dying.’

If he got any redder he was going to be permanently burnt, he thought miserably. ‘It wasn’t related to the surgery,’ he said stiffly. ‘I was stabbed during the Colony Wars. It was about that.’ Unbidden, he suddenly remembered the dream he’d been woken out of in the bunk room, and frowned at the blurred images. ‘I guess... I hear what he said. When I woke up during the surgery, Duo said, He’s sweating. That’s what I dream. Just him saying that.’

She put an overly familiar hand on his arm, and though he was too polite to push her away, he wanted to. Especially after he realised she’d only done that to get her fingers over his pulse-point. To his embarrassment, he discovered his heart was beating faster, and he felt a little overheated. ‘It’s not uncommon after your experience,’ she was saying. ‘As a doctor, I want to tell you not to hide from this. It’s normal, and there are ways to stop it from becoming a bigger problem. You could talk to a therapist. I’d be happy to recommend someone I know who operates near your neighbourhood.’

‘I’ve had a full debriefing on PTSD,’ he said. ‘My sister is also a doctor, and I’ve got a very competent GP. I know what to look for, and I’m convinced that post-trauma stress is not something I have to add to my list right now.’

Her eyes told him she didn’t believe him. But she let him go, and leaned away. ‘All right,’ she said.

‘Thank you for your concern. And you can assure Duo that you talked to me, if that’s why he abandoned us so pointedly.’

A crooked grin not unlike Duo’s crept over her full lips. ‘He’ll be disappointed you noticed,’ she said.

He grinned back at her. ‘He can idolise my powers of obvservation.’ She laughed, and he relaxed at the sound. They managed to finish their meals with companionable chatter about the Maganac Corps, and Quatre allowed himself to forget about dreams and doctors.


	14. Fourteen

Four minutes before midnight, Duo sent a team of agents to break into Wufei’s flat in London with a warrant to search for evidence. Then he slumped deep into his chair behind his desk, put his head back, and didn’t speak for a long time.

Sally caught Quatre’s eyes, and looked deliberately at the door. Quatre rose from his seat on the couch in the corner of their shared office, and followed her out into the hall.

‘I’m not trying to get rid of you,’ she told him as she drew the door closed after their exit. ‘But I’m thinking he could use a really big cup of coffee right now, and you’ve been on the verge of falling asleep since you got up at seven. The walk might do you some good.’

Quatre rolled his tired shoulders, accepting her statement at face value. ‘Coffee, two sugars and no cream,’ he recalled. He looked up at her. ‘What about you?’ Though Sally had been more than ready to reduce him to the status of assistant when it came to fetching coffee for Duo, she balked at having him take her order. He had to prod her several times before she admitted she’d rather have a tea, and Quatre walked away satisfied that everyone would get what they needed to make it through the next few hours. The rec room was a brightly-lit space somewhat smaller than the other third-level offices, and it came complete with a small stove and a big refrigerator that was stocked with unclaimed foods provided by some caterer named ‘Jacques,’ judging by the rose-coloured containers. Quatre managed to put together a tray for the three of them, whimsically arranging deli slices and cheese cubes on a little paper plate and brewing fresh coffee for Duo. While he stood waiting for it and chewing on a bit of turkey, he noticed the ‘vid screen over the microwave, and turned it on to the midnight news. He blinked to find the flashing red letters announcing important coverage, with an urgent trumpet-heavy musical tag adding to the excitement.

 _‘This is Douglas Andrews with Channel 18,’_ a reporter announced, and the camera cut to him. Quatre recognised him as the same man who had introduced the first IEO broadcast– was it only that morning? He looked grave now, dressed impeccably in a three-piece black suit with a sober grey tie, papers held between his hands and the red background shrieking his authority. _‘Channel 18 has been tipped off to the existence of a threat to the entire Earth Sphere Alliance, which we feel we must pass on to the people for their own safety, despite pressure from certain government officials.’_ Andrews glared solemnly out of the screen. _‘We have been told that just last night a team of masked and armed men broke into the Ukrainian prison holding Mariemaia Khushrenada, the leader of the Barton Rebellion who threatened to drop a colony on–‘_

‘Shit,’ Quatre said, and ran from the rec room. Without even noticing the halls he dashed through, he made it back to Duo and Sally’s office, and crashed through the door without knocking. ‘Turn on your ‘vid,’ he barked at them. ‘Channel 18. They know about Khushrenada.’

Duo let loose a string of cursing even as Sally leapt from her desk to the table by the window that held their ‘vid. She flipped rapidly through the channels before finding Douglas Andrews, now narrating over a screen of pictures which included Mariemaia Khushrenada, Dekim Barton, and Relena Darlian. _‘–in what is now called the Eve War. Khushrenada’s freedom was purchased with the lives of eight wardens whose names have not yet been released to the public. This was the situation as it stood last night, but two hours ago Channel 18 received an anonymous package containing this video, which we bring to you now, unedited.’_

‘I’m going to kill the dickhead,’ Duo growled. ‘All news agencies have standing orders to bring anything suspicious to the authorities before they pull shit like this!’

‘Andrews is always fighting us on "free press" issues,’ Sally explained tensely to Quatre, though she never looked away from the screen, watching it with narrowed eyes. ‘He’s never seen the difference between public safety and self-aggrandizement–‘

Andrews cut straight to the video feed. It was Mariemaia Khushrenada, but that was not what made Quatre gasp and grope backwards for the couch.

He recognised the nameless room she sat in.

The girl on the screen opened her mouth, and began to speak. Her voice was no longer the piping child’s voice he remembered from broadcasts three years earlier, but it was still a sweet soprano, however mature and clipped. He picked out the details of her appearance, letting her words wash over him; she wore a uniform now, much the same as the one she’d been posed and pratted about in before for Barton’s army. She seemed more dangerous now, seated in large leather chair, her hand on the hilt of a ceremonial sword, her badges of rank and the gold cords of her cape reflecting in the light. The smugness, the mischief he remembered in her was gone. Now there was wrath, contained and channeled, but deadly.

 _‘My long imprisonment after my defeat at the hands of the ESA coalition forces three years ago was the result of errors in judgement,’_ she was saying. Her ozone-blue eyes were cold and flat. ‘ _The men responsible for those errors have been destroyed. I remain. I have bided my time, gathering those who have always been loyal to my cause. They stand with me now against the world and the colonies as I render my demands to you.’_

She paused. Her fingers tightened convulsively on the ornamental hilt of her sword. _‘I am the daughter of his Excellency Treize Khushrenada, the greatest leader of our time,’_ she said, suddenly hot and furious. _‘I am the daughter of Leia Barton, who was the daughter of Dekim Barton, the only man who dared defy the Alliance Military by building the Gundams and training their infamous pilots. In my veins flows the blood of heroes and magnates, giants of men who were themselves rulers before me._

 _‘In their name and in my own I call to all men and woman who have raised weapons in battle for their lives and their homelands. I call upon all of you throw off the yoke of ‘peace’ which has choked all that is strong and wonderful from our people these past three years. There is no justice in burying your many sacrifices by washing away the evidence of war! Are there monuments to your deaths? Are there eulogies to your lives? Do school children celebrate your victories and mourn your defeats? No.’_ She was panting for breath, and had to stop while she regained her composure. Her round cheeks were flushed, her eyes fevered. _‘President Brussels has climbed to his pulpit and preached the word of Peace as though it were the edict of angels! Relena Peacecraft appears in public to cry for orphans of war and the rebuilding of shattered cities, while conveniently turning a blind eye to those who need her support the most– the soldiers. You, the men and women now maimed, now stunted, now forgotten by those rich and powerful fools who stood on your bloody necks to reach their grasping fingers for more!’_

‘My God,’ Sally murmured, somewhere both near and far away.

Perhaps Mariemaia Khushrenada could not stand, but no-one had ever sat straighter, seemed taller. With her pointed chin raised high and her gaze clear and proud, she delivered her demands.

 _‘I have nine nuclear warheads,’_ she said flatly. _‘But I do not seek to destroy those very lives which I hold dearer than my own. I have targeted the ocean itself. Year after year we have rained our pollution and our garbage into this source of all human life. I will complete this destruction by detonating one warhead every hour if Brussels and his administration do not step down and turn the government over to me. I will allow thirty-six hours for compliance. On the thirty-seventh, I will detonate the first warhead.’_ She inclined her head, and the screen went black.

Duo released an explosive breath. ‘I’m going to kill her,’ he said softly. ‘And then I’m going to devote the rest of my life to making sure that there are no other Khushrenadas in existence.’

‘I’ll help,’ Sally grunted. She jumped when their buzzer went off, and slammed a palm over it. ‘What?’ she demanded.

 _‘My office,’_ Une’s voice ordered. _‘Now.’_ Duo was already moving toward the door, but Sally took a moment to glance at Quatre, and then suddenly she was standing over him, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. He moved his head away automatically.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked him gently, dropping into a crouch in front of him and patently checking his vitals.

‘That was my ship,’ he said hollowly. ‘They’re on the IEO.’

 

**

 

Another Preventer slipped into the office quietly as they spoke, and handed Duo a folded bit of paper. Duo read it, and swore.

Quatre turned to look at him. ‘What does it say?’

‘Chang’s house is empty. They found his badge sitting on the kitchen table.’ Duo swore again, crumbled the note in his fists. ‘He’s freaking AWOL.’

Quatre looked back at the news reports, some now playing clips from the Channel 18 broadcast. He watched Khushrenada’s face crumple in anger, smooth out again as if wiped clean. ‘Well,’ he responded at last, ‘it doesn’t get much clearer than that.’

‘We suspected him,’ Une admitted, closing one portfolio with a sigh and reaching for another. ‘Six weeks ago he received a very large transfer from an unknown source.’

Quatre tore his eyes away from the screen. ‘You routinely monitor your agents’ accounts?’ he asked.

Duo affirmed it. ‘In the first days it was the only way to see who was paying who to be where,’ he explained. ‘Now it’s standard policy. When I confronted him, Wufei told him that you were loaning him some money. It was plausible– we all know you helped Trowa get started. But when I checked you out I couldn’t find any holes.’ He grinned briefly, tiredly. ‘Your accounts are refreshingly honest,’ he added.

‘I should hope so,’ he answered, trying not to be miffed that Duo had done his job, even if he hadn’t asked before he’d gone digging about in Quatre’s finances.

‘As it was, Chang’s new wealth disappeared very quickly,’ Une completed the discussion. ‘He said it went to an L5 memorial fund, but that appears to have been purely a stall tactic. It took us two weeks to get a subpoena for their records, and you know what the L5 government is like. They fought us all the way. I had to fly out there myself to appear before a judge.’

‘If you suspected him, why did you let him go to Brussels?’ Quatre asked, turning back to the ‘vid.

‘There were no good reasons to detain him.’ Behind him, Une sighed. ‘The wheels of authority have always turned more slowly than those of revolution.’

‘Yes,’ Quatre murmured. ‘I suppose you’d know that intimately.’

Silence greeted his remark. He didn’t acknowledge it. He was playing with the remote control for Une’s ‘vid, adjusting the screen to blow up the right-hand corner, which held an edge of the Loran navigator partially hidden by Khushrenada’s shoulder. He could almost make out the readings.

Duo stood, gathering several folders and his neglected mug of coffee to his chest. ‘We can do that down in Forensics,’ he told Quatre. ‘Come on, I need a refill anyway.’

Une had recovered her game face. She ignored Quatre as she completed a note in the margin of her notepad, and set it aside. ‘As soon as you know the location of the IEO, inform me. I’ll have a team waiting for you.’ Duo nodded, and despite the mess in his arms, managed to hold the door for Quatre with his foot. Quatre knew the way to the lift by now, and led the way to it, jamming the call button and turning to let Duo catch up with him.

‘You shouldn’t bait her,’ Duo said, but his eyes didn’t quite meet Quatre’s. ‘She’s got rules to follow. We both know they suck, but it’s what separates us from–‘

‘Terrorists?’ Quatre interrupted. ‘That’s what OZ liked to call us, as I recall. "Dissidents" doesn’t have the same weight. Or "freedom fighters." Of course, we were only freedom fighters while the colonies still supported us, and that only lasted until the first economic sanctions.’ Duo’s lips scrunched oddly, and Quatre realised he was chewing the inside of his cheek. ‘Stop that,’ he added absently, lifting a finger to flick it against the spot being mauled by busy teeth.

Duo blinked at him, but obeyed. ‘She hasn’t been OZ for a long time. Anyway, I thought you’d be the first one to tell me we’re all on the same side now.’

‘Except that we’re not, are we?’ The lift was taking forever. But then, Une had immediately called all London Preventers back to duty, when Khushrenada’s broadcast had hit the airwaves. Quatre resisted the urge to tap the softly glowing button again, though he had to curl his fingers into a fist to stop himself. ‘I see two distinct sides right now. We’re on one and Wufei is on the other.’

‘You were taking this a lot better earlier...’

‘Before I knew he was trying to start a war from my ship, before I knew he was trying to destroy everything I’ve worked for!’ He slammed the button, feeling the inside spring compress as far as it could and quiver. The lift arrived, and Quatre watched the doors open, satisfied. ‘I want to be on your team,’ he informed them, stepping through.

Duo licked his lips as he chose their destination. Then suddenly he put down the folders he was carrying, right on the carpeted floor of the lift, and hit the emergency stop. Quatre stared at him as their descent halted, hard enough to shake the entire five-foot-square space, while Duo weathered the shivers and faced him.

‘You can’t come,’ he said. His eyes wore the apology he wasn’t going to say aloud. ‘You know it, too, or you wouldn’t be here trying to sneak it past me sideways, distracting me with this crap about Une and Wufei.’

‘I thought you said I had your back,’ Quatre accused him. ‘I thought you understood.’

‘I understood you wanting to be here. Hell, I understand you wanting to lead the charge. That doesn’t mean you can do it.’

He tried to put a lid on his rising anger. Tried to ignore his rising helplessness. ‘Those are my people, Duo. It’s my ship, my crew. They’re mine as much as the Maganacs ever were, as much as you and Heero and the others.’

Duo’s fingers looked for something to hold, and ended out clenching on themselves. ‘I know,’ he said evenly. ‘And I know if I were in your place–‘

‘It’s the same damn place! We’re the same, Duo. We both want to fight this.’

‘Do I have to spell it out for you?’ Duo demanded, taking a step toward him. ‘You’re a civilian. I can’t willfully endanger you. I can’t give you Preventer guns and send you into armed combat. Those are the rules.’

‘Fuck the rules,’ Quatre spat, slapping an open palm against the steel chair rail. ‘I fought two wars with no-one’s permission but my own conscience. So did you. We agreed, when the colonies turned their backs on us, that we would keep fighting OZ because it was the right thing to do! I bled for that, Duo, just as much as the rest of you, I almost gave up my life–‘

‘For exactly what we have now,’ Duo interrupted, his voice hard and grown-up and nothing like the cocky teenager he’d been five years ago. His shoulders were square, and while there was compassion in his gaze, there wasn’t compromise. ‘For the kind of world where civilians don’t go to war. That’s what you bled for, Quatre. You more than any of us.’

His throat was so tight that swallowing almost made him cough. He had to look away until he could breathe again. The polished metal walls of the lift were like mirrors, and his eyes had a bruised look to them, reflected like that. ‘Don’t do this to me,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t tell me to sit back and watch while you fight our war all over again.’

Duo moved, he didn’t know to do what, and he flinched just a second before Duo’s arms went around him. The embrace was bruising, and it was over almost before it started. ‘One of the bravest things you ever did was lay down your sword,’ Duo whispered. ‘Just because Wufei isn’t willing to do that– it doesn’t mean he can destroy what you’ve worked so hard to make with your life. I won’t let him. So let me do that for you. Let me protect what you’ve made.’

 

**

 

Quatre stared up at the plastic straps and mattress above his head. Then he rolled onto his side, tugging his pillow down to cushion his chest automatically. He stared at the door, and the dim white circle of the clock, too dark to read.

The bunk room was empty. Somewhere outside it was early morning, perhaps even beginning to brighten with dawn. The bunk room had no windows, but Quatre didn’t want them. He felt trapped, surrounded, helpless, and inclined to wallow in it. The scratchy wool of his blanket rubbed his bare arm and hip as he tugged it higher, and he smoothed his palm over it, reflecting that years ago, calluses would have caught in the rough threads. He would always have hard palms and fingers, but the constant wear of a cockpit’s leather-wrapped controls were part of lifetime that had ended in explosion and flame.

He still thought of Sandrock with affection and grief; a missing part of himself, like the brother he had never had. Duo wasn’t the only one to love his Gundam. He wasn’t the only one who had regrets late at night. Quatre had cried– he remembered pressing his face against cool metal, the night he and Duo and Trowa had agreed they had to destroy their Gundams, falling asleep bitter and exhausted laying against Sandrock’s massive chest. Trowa had found him there in the morning, and brought him a damp washcloth for his swollen face and red eyes, and he had kissed Quatre’s temple gently. That kiss had been a melancholy balm against the awful necessity of their final duty. It had given him the absolution he’d needed, to climb that hill at dawn, to stand with his comrades and friends and press the detonation trigger.

Quatre sighed, and dropped his nose into the edge of his pillow. He wondered what Trowa was doing now. Duo had said Trowa had a big client. It would be an hour later in Brussels than London. Maybe Trowa would already be awake, padding barefoot through his condo with the ugly blue carpet Quatre passively loathed. Turning on his expensive, gourmet coffee brewer, filling the kitchen with the smell of vanilla. Opening a window for the chilly spring morning, inviting in the dawn.

His lower half enjoyed the visuals, the conjured scents of everything Trowa. Quatre squeezed his eyes shut, reconstructing the image of his lover, shirtless, broad shoulders dappled with sunburn, that single vein in his biceps protruding momentarily as Trowa clenched his arm. Strong pecs with that scattering of dark hair that disappeared over tight abs, picking up again just below a flat navel. He sighed again, and rubbed his eyes. He felt pleasantly buzzed, not really aroused, just warm and content. It was the most he’d managed since his surgery, not that he’d had much opportunity for anything more. Out of curiosity, he dipped a hand under his blanket and touched himself through his trousers. But he was only half-hard, and it didn’t seem to be going any further. He’d never been particularly good at masturbation. He’d been worse than a virgin that first time with Trowa, but everything had gone so smoothly, just falling into place, answering all his questions, been so satisfying... Masturbation had always seemed like an empty echo of what it felt like with the only man he’d ever been with.

A man who was not here now, because he hadn’t been in Dorada, because he hadn’t been in London.

Duo somehow found out you were having surgery, a nasty part of his mind supplied. Duo left his job to be with you. Twice. The last time you saw Trowa was so he could plant that–

‘Bug,’ Quatre swore, sitting up so swiftly he knocked his head against the wooden frame of the bunk above him. He swore again, pressing his hand over the hurt, even as he left the warmth of his blanket and fumbled for the shirt and jumper he’d left in a pile on the floor.

It was daylight. The morning sun slanting through the tinted windows speared his sore eyes, forcing him to raise a hand to block the worst of the direct glare. He headed straight for the lift and up two floors to Duo’s office, but it was empty when he got there. It took a few frustrated seconds to realise Duo and his partner were probably getting breakfast– it was nearly eight. He debated going to look for them in the cafeteria, but found his eyes drawn to the two computers that sat innocently waiting for their owners.

He slid into Duo’s chair, and brought the ‘vid to life with a touch to the thumb pad. It didn’t even ask him for a passcode when he input the number, so he didn’t feel particularly guilty about not waiting for permission. He tried not to drum his fingers while it dialed.

And rang.

‘Pick up, Trowa,’ Quatre commanded softly. Impatience got to him, and he cut off the call, entering a new number, this time to Trowa’s secretary. But there was no answer to that, either, and none at Trowa’s condominium. With an edge of desperation, he tried the number he’d used on the IEO, that private line Trowa had disconnected.

Nothing.

‘What are you doing?’ Sally demanded from the door, suddenly standing beside him and glaring at him. Quatre looked up to find Duo in the doorway, ragged and racoon-eyed, gulping from a coffee mug.

‘It just got worse,’ Quatre told him bitterly.


	15. Fifteen

Quatre watched through the window in Une’s office as the team assembled, fifteen agents of various ages, some of them hard-bitten veterans, some no older than himself. They gathered about the big conference table, where a pile of briefs waited for them, but their low-voiced chatter ended abruptly when Duo and Sally entered, and took up position in front of the projector aiming at the white wall behind them.

 _‘You represent the team hand-picked by Director Une,’_ Sally said, without any preamble. _‘Our mission is to locate and disarm a nuclear threat. Secondary to this is our order to capture or kill Mariemaia Khushrenada and her people.’_

 _‘If you open to the first page of your brief,’_ Duo said, and turned on the projector. Blown-up blueprints of the IEO appeared on the large wall, and a big fuzzy point that was his fingertip. _‘This is our target, location currently unknown. The IEO was scheduled to make for the Panama Canal seven days ago, but it has not reported in to any of the check-points where it was expected. That means it’s somewhere in the Atlantic.’_

‘She,’ Quatre murmured, knowing he wouldn’t be heard. ‘Ships are called ‘she.’‘ He sighed, and turned away from the window, dropping onto Une’s couch. Duo had indulged in a little yelling before he’d calmed down enough to listen to Quatre’s assertion that Trowa Barton was involved in the new Khushrenada uprising. Sally had been the sympathetic one, but he didn’t know her well enough to accept the emotion he saw in her every time she hesitated, careful of his feelings. But their training had reasserted itself very quickly, and they had simply amended their mission plans to include the new information– that they were not only facing one of their own, but two Gundam pilots.

The door opened, and Une entered her office briskly, letting the door swing shut and slam behind her. She didn’t immediately notice him on her couch, and he waited until she had reached her desk to politely clear his throat. She jumped just a little, one hand sneaking up to her hair in that peculiarly feminine gesture of self-protection.

‘I’m sorry to startle you,’ Quatre said, rising.

Her expression became closed, and she completed the motion of smoothing her hair back, looping it behind an ear. ‘Not at all, Quatre.’ She walked around her desk and sat, queuing her computer and shuffling through the paper messages left on her desk. ‘Is there something I can help you with?’

‘I hope so.’ He ventured closer to her desk, standing before it, not beside it, though it necessitated extra steps. ‘In the interest of saving time,’ he added, looking down at her, ‘I’ll get straight to the point. I accept your offer.’ He dropped the paper he held to the desktop.

Une looked up in the act of settling reading glasses over her nose. ‘My offer?’ she repeated, confused. She picked up the paper automatically, but he could see that it was a moment before she really read the words on the page. ‘This is an application,’ she said slowly.

‘Three years ago you offered me a Field Agent position with the Preventers,’ Quatre said. ‘When I turned you down, you said that offer would always stand. So I’m taking it. Requesting immediate transfer to active duty. To Operation M.’

She wanted to sigh, he could see it. She wanted to scream. But Une was nothing if not collected and cool-headed. ‘I appreciate your anger,’ she said softly. ‘I can most certainly appreciate your frustration with not being able to do all that you are capable of doing. But we both know I can’t let you on the team just because you want it badly.’

‘You’re a smart woman,’ he told her. ‘And smart people leave loopholes when they create organisations like the Preventers. I know for a fact that Zechs Merquise never signed a damned thing two days before the Eve War. You’ve got extended authority in emergencies. Use it.’

She was half-way to it. He didn’t prod her. He waited, letting her work her way through it, weigh the consequences. When the timing felt right, he completed his argument. ‘Instating me will cover the legalities when you’re forced into an inquest after this.’

‘There’s an implied ‘or’ in that sentence,’ Une muttered. She set the form down, and folded her hands over it. ‘Or you’re going to do what you want anyway, without my oversight, and probably without telling anyone first; possibly endangering my team and jeapordising my operation. If I don’t honour your application.’ She didn’t seem to expect an answer, and Quatre didn’t give one. ‘I appreciate your problem with being shut out,’ she began again. ‘But my agents are trained to think and work as a team. Your sudden presence would be disruptive and quite possibly very dangerous.’

‘I designed and built my own Gundam,’ he said flatly. ‘I recovered and implemented the Zero System. And when White Fang threatened to drop Libra onto Earth, I took four boys who barely knew each other and I shaped them into a fighting unit unparalleled in the universe. I did that. Maybe it’s not the same as running sims with my co-workers during months of training, but how many of your field agents had that, either? They’re not regular people, or even trained soldiers. They’re better than that. And so am I. My sudden presence will be exactly as useful as we decide it will be.’

Her mouth thinned, and she removed her glasses abruptly. ‘I don’t appreciate coercion, Mr Winner, especially from a young man who ought to know better.’

‘We’ve all got problems.’ He waited again, for her anger to pass. It took longer this time. ‘I can contribute,’ he said softly, persuasively. ‘Far better as part of a team than from the sidelines. Make whatever provisions you like on my employment. I’ll sign whatever doesn’t screw me in perpetuity.’

He won a snort of laughter, however reluctant, with that one. ‘Always the businessman,’ Une sighed, and carefully pressed his application flat against her desktop. ‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘Posturing aside... tell me what you really want from this.’

Quatre smiled inwardly as he reached for one of the Venetian chairs, pulling it to the edge of the desk and sitting. ‘I want something to do so I don’t go crazy,’ he admitted baldly, switching easily into negotiation. ‘I know that ship better than any engineer. I helped design it, build it, and I lived on it for four weeks. I can be helpful.’

‘I can order you to consult with my team,’ Une countered.

‘And we both know I won’t jeapordise the mission by refusing. That said, I think you’re still underestimating me.’

‘Your... health is at issue,’ she said, reluctant to be so crude, but also determined. Quatre did his best to be honest in return.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘And if you had a million options, I know I’d be very, very far down the list. But you’ve got twenty-six hours and nine nuclear warheads that are more important than my post-op recovery. I’m fit, and I’m capable.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Put me on the team,’ he said. ‘I’ll let Maxwell and Po decide where to place me and I’ll do what I’m ordered without protest.’

They stared at each other as a minute ticked by. Then Une reached for a stand of pens, and swiftly signed the bottom of his application. ‘There will be hell to pay later,’ she said as she dated beside it. She opened the top drawer of her desk, and removed an official stamp. The springs squeaked just before the smack of the seal on paper. ‘Do me a favour and don’t run away to Mars when you’ve had enough of the Preventers– that’s a hell of a lot of paperwork.’ He just managed not to grin at her as she reached for her comm, and opened a line. ‘Tannahill,’ she said cripsly. ‘I need a uniform and temp badge brought to my office, size...’

‘Small,’ Quatre supplied, and sighed. He thought Une’s dark eyes glinted with amusement at his expense, but nothing bled into her voice. ‘Small,’ she repeated. ‘Double-time, if you please.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ a woman’s voice acknowledged, and Une let her finger fall away from the comm. She gazed at Quatre.

‘Welcome aboard,’ she said, ‘Agent Firebrand.’

Ten minutes later, Quatre slipped into the conference room where Duo and Sally were still giving their presentation. The new-leather smell of his jacket was distracting, but it fit fairly well. It rustled slightly as he took a position against the far wall. From the way Duo neither interrupted himself nor even glanced at the door, Quatre surmised that comings-and-goings during debriefings were commonplace; but Sally looked, and her face underwent a rapid series of changes that settled into something between chagrin and amused appreciation of his tactics. Quatre nodded solemnly to her, and pointedly turned his eyes up to the projections on the wall, now showing pictures of the outer hull of the IEO that he recognised from Senate files.

‘We’ve got one possible entry site on the fifth deck launch bay,’ Duo was saying, his finger on the projector looming large and black on the wall behind him. ‘Blueprints show it at approximately six feet above sea level. At this time I think it’s too risky– there’s only one door out of the bay into the ship, and they could stick some asshole with an automatic there and mow us down as we board.’

‘If we had a ship of comparable size,’ one agent mused aloud, an older man with a faint scar running down his cheek into his beard, ‘we could follow maritime tradition and simply run alongside them. We could board once we’re close enough, just going over the top.’

‘Tactical agrees,’ Sally said, re-entering the discussion. ‘We run a greater risk of enemy fire on our vessel, which we can’t return– not with nuclear warheads on the IEO. But statistically it looks like the best way to diminish casualties to our side.’

‘The warheads are likely to be on the top deck,’ Duo said. ‘Which means we board and disarm first. Carr and Gryffydd are joining us from Bomb Squad. Our first priority is to get them on board and cover their asses while they do their job. We must expect to face heavy opposition, so I’ve asked for a secondary team to crew our ship. The ESA has kindly agreed to loan us the Longhorn, an MPF-class command ship. About the only thing I understand from the communique is that it runs at 30 knots, and the IEO can only manage 20, so we can out-run our enemy if they try to slip out the van. I’m not sure yet what a knot is, but faster is faster.’

That was greeted with chuckles. Duo paused to push his hair out of his face and scratch his head. Quatre knew the moment he’d been discovered; Duo went very still, his eyes unblinking. But it was only a moment, and then Duo went on as if nothing had happened.

‘The Longhorn is coming up from manoeuvers in southern Spain, which means if we’re going to maximise our time, we have to be in place to meet it. I’ve got a jet ready for us in one hour, ETA at twelve-twenty-seven hours. If all goes well we will engage with the IEO at their present position in just under twenty hours,’ he said. ‘Suit up and be ready for transport to the airfield in thirty minutes.’

‘Aye sir!’ the crowd of agents said, rising to their feet simultaneously. Quatre stood aside as they filed past and out of the conference room, anticipating Duo’s eyes on him. As he’d predicted, the door no sooner shut than Duo put both hands flat on the table, leaned over them on locked elbows, and said directly to the scratched wood surface, ‘You could have trusted me, Quatre.’

Quatre exhaled, and leaned his head back against the wall. ‘I do,’ he said softly. ‘This isn’t about that.’

‘Well. Maybe that’s how it feels.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Quatre said, and meant it. He wanted to leave his stand in the corner and embrace Duo the way Duo was always able to do for him, but he’d never been as comfortable giving with that open affection as Duo was. It didn’t help that Sally lounged almost insolently just out of the way, her arms crossed under her breasts and her stance radiating her interest in their exchange. ‘I know you have my back,’ Quatre tried again. ‘But this way– I have yours, too.’

‘Is this about me?’ Duo demanded cuttingly, standing up straight. ‘Because I think it’s about Trowa, and the fact that you let him slip around you again. Just because your lover is an asshole doesn’t give you the right to waltz in like you’re the only one capable of cleaning up after him!’

He tried not to flinch at that, tried to absorb it and dissect it for truth. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just know that if something goes wrong out there, I won’t be able to live with knowing I stood aside and let you go into battle alone.’ He heard what he’d said, and glanced at Sally with apology. ‘Not alone,’ he amended. ‘Just... not with me.’ He closed his eyes, pressing his skull back against the plaster. ‘We’re a team, Duo. You’re my best friend. I should have been here all along, and I wasn’t.’

‘I never blamed you for that,’ Duo said forcefully. ‘I supported your decision.’

‘But it wasn’t the right one!’ he blurted, and had to look away as a hot flush shot up over his face. ‘It was a bad choice and I did the selfish thing because I felt guilty over abandoning my family. People like us don’t get that option. We signed away our lives for freedom and peace, and that’s not a one-time job.’

Sally made a little noise into the silence, and began to gather up her papers. ‘Fascinating as this argument is,’ she murmured, ‘I suggest we wait to finish it later. We’ve got a plane to catch, and since you appear to be coming with us, Quatre, that means we’ve got to get you some weapons and armour issue.’

‘Une is taking care of it,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to pick it up now.’

‘Then I’ll walk you down.’ She looked at Duo, but he didn’t look back as he picked up his brief and stalked to the door. Quatre, on an impulse he immediately regretted, grabbed Duo’s wrist as the other man passed, and tried not to be hurt when Duo wouldn’t look at him, either. He let go when Duo tugged away.

‘Not yet,’ Duo muttered, his eyelashes quivering as his eyes roved beneath, but never up to Quatre’s face. ‘Just– not yet, all right.’

He didn’t have time to swallow down the apology that still clung to his tongue before Duo was out the door. Sally came about the table to stand at his side, and she gestured to the door.

‘He is a professional,’ she said, as they exited into the empty hall.

‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ Quatre answered. ‘So am I. But we’ll still feel like shit underneath it.’

 

**

 

‘They’re projecting false coordinates,’ Stanchion explained– or complained, perhaps. He was glaring at his screens with narrowed eyes. The fingers of one hand flew over the big keyboard with its dozens of extra function keys, while the other traced up the thumb-pad to enlarge the capture of the Loran-C they’d been using since the broadcast on Channel 18. ‘Time signature on this video indicates it was filmed two days ago. I’ve extrapolated what the Loran shows, and it points to coordinates considerably north what their GPS is reporting.’

‘How easy is it to manipulate GPS signals?’ Duo asked, leaning over to look.

‘I could move HQ from London to South America and there isn’t a single piece of technology that would be any the wiser,’ Stanchion said, shrugging. ‘It’s just a satellite and radio system. But you’re going to have to wrangle the truth out of your machines, especially as you get closer to the IEO. They’re accurate enough, but two metres in open ocean can be the difference between the Titanic and a pleasure cruise if you get bad information.’

‘Benson is my acting tech liaison,’ Duo said finally, straightening. ‘Coordinate with him and make sure I stay on course. There’s a lot of shitty ways to die, but drowning is about as low as it gets. I’d like to avoid that.’

‘Coward.’

It wasn’t Stanchion who said it. Duo whirled toward the lab door, to see blue eyes smirking gently at him.

‘Maybe I can help?’ was all Heero Yuy said.

It took Duo all of two seconds to cross a crowded room and grab Heero into a rough embrace. The one-time pilot of Wing Zero, the man who had single-handedly destroyed Dekim Barton’s dreams, looked first startled, then awkward; and finally pleased, as he stood gingerly allowing himself to be hugged.

Duo stepped back reluctantly. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes,’ he said. ‘But what are you doing here?’

‘I... had a call from an old friend,’ Heero explained vaguely. ‘Then I saw the news reports. I had an idea what you’d be doing about it.’

Duo made a face. ‘An hour ago I would have sent you home with ‘come round for Christmas sometime’ invite. Fortunately for you, Quatre already did the hard work of taking the entire department over his knee and spanking a commission out of it.’ Heero’s eyebrows climbed, but he didn’t comment. ‘It shouldn’t be a problem to get you instated on the fly. And I know just where to send you.’ He lifted his communicator to his mouth, and said, ‘Benson, get in here.’ He lowered it a little, to say to Heero, ‘Benson is my top tech man. He might give you a run for your money on his best days, but I’ll feel a hell of a lot better with you running point.’

Heero’s expression darkened. ‘Tech?’ he demanded. ‘I thought I’d be–‘

Duo, on the other hand, wore a look that brooked no argument. ‘No,’ he said flatly, cutting across Heero’s protest. ‘I’ve already got three other Gundam pilots to worry about. And besides–‘ His voice went low and steely. ‘You made a vow. I’m not putting you anywhere that might require you to use deadly force.’

Heero’s mouth opened. Then, oddly humbled and relieved, he only nodded. Duo gripped his shoulder fast and tight, then pushed him toward the door. ‘Benson will fill you in on your objectives,’ he said, professional once again. ‘I expect results, and I’m going to need them ASAP.’

He didn’t have to say not to let him down. Heero accepted that, his eyes promising what he didn’t have to say aloud either. They looked at each other silent for another moment, and then Heero said, ‘You look good. Command agrees with you.’

A smile spread over Duo’s face, genuine and young and pleased. ‘Really?’

Heero nodded. ‘Come back,’ he said.

Duo nodded. ‘Roger that. You owe me dinner, anyway.’ Heero grinned, and ducked his head. Then he was out the door, and gone. Duo stood looking after him, only vaguely aware of Stanchion rising and joining him.

‘That was Heero Yuy?’ the other agent asked. ‘I mean– that was him?’

‘We’re gonna win this thing,’ Duo murmured. He slapped a fist into his open palm. ‘We’re going to win.’ He laughed, and clapped Stanchion on the back. ‘Don’t forget about Benson,’ he ordered, and left, his stride long and sure.

 

**

 

‘In a way, you’ve always been the least likely to fight for the colonies,’ Sally said, watching him check the two double-action .357s he had chosen from the HQ arsenal. ‘I puzzled over you for a long time. L4 rejected your father’s rule, and that lead directly to his death.’

‘OZ killed my father,’ Quatre corrected her, absently racking the slide and thumbing the safety. ‘I’d like an ambi-operation Beretta instead,’ he told the quartermaster, a grizzled man who looked unimpressed by the slender young man so thoughtfully examining his weapons. As the agent walked away, Quatre continued, ‘If I’m being completely honest, my father killed my father. Detaching the satellite was a wasted gesture, and at its core, it was selfish. The Council were within their rights to use L4's mining resources as they pleased.’

She hesitated. ‘That is not the answer I expected,’ she admitted a moment later.

His Beretta arrived, a .40. Quatre accepted it with his left hand, repeating his actions with the magnums. ‘My father was a tyrant,’ he said to the black finish of the gun. ‘He used his wealth to take a choke-hold of L4. If the Alliance hadn’t shut down communication with Earth, he would have done it here, too. He didn’t care about his employees, much less the citizens of our colony. Relena Peacecraft knew more about pacifism at fifteen than he did at fifty– for him, it was all empty philosophy, a self-centred superiority of inaction.’ It no longer hurt to say aloud, and he gained strength, in a strange way, from hearing it. ‘Watching him die was one of the worst things I’ve ever survived. I hated OZ for shooting him down. But I hated him more for being a coward. For running away and leaving us alone with a horrible war that he was too weak to fight.’

He hadn’t heard Duo come into the depot. His friend’s voice behind him made him jump. ‘I thought you destroyed the colony because of him,’ Duo said. He leaned his elbows on the edge of the counter where Quatre and Sally stood. ‘Because of Zero System.’

It warmed him to have Duo there, considering they’d fought less than ten minutes earlier. Duo didn’t quite hold his gaze, but his presence was worth something. Quatre found his voice again, as he took the holsters the quartermaster offered and began to strap them on. ‘I never believed the colonies were responsible for my father’s murder,’ he said at last, turning his back to Sally so she could adjust the straps over his shirt. ‘But... I started to believe that as long as people were in Space at all... The fighting would never end. There would always be ambitious men who were ruthless enough to destroy what was pure and wonderful in humanity’s drive to explore– turn it into a desire to conquer and destroy. The colonies were the final frontier, and they were too weak to resist the Alliance, OZ, Romafeller... I thought Space had rejected us.’

A hand came down on his shoulder, Sally’s, small and warm. But it was Duo who said, ‘That’s what you meant. About Zero not making the hate in you.’

‘Zero gave me the guts and strength to do what was in my heart,’ Quatre said bitterly. ‘It finds your secrets. It exploits them. And– I knew that when I built it. I wanted something to push me over the edge.’

‘There was no way you could have known,’ Sally disagreed, her fingers tightening on his collar. ‘I’ve seen the plans for Zero System. There is no way you knew when you were integrating it to Wing Zero that is was anything more than an AI guidance system, any different from what was being designed for the Mobile Dolls.’ Her bright eyes caught his when he looked up. Then she smiled, squeezed a final time, and let him go. ‘We’ve all got plenty of blame for what we did do,’ she murmured. ‘I say it’s time to let go of what we didn’t.’ She stuck her hands into her pockets, nodded to Duo, and strolled toward the door. Both men watched her go.

Quatre said, ‘How can you stand being around a woman that tall?’

Duo burst into laughter. ‘She’s only one-eight.’

Quatre was only one-six, barely. He made a face, and Duo laughed at him again. Then he slung an arm about Quatre’s back, and drew him along. ‘Transport in five,’ he said. ‘I have some very good news for you, when we get a minute.’

‘All right,’ Quatre said, puzzled by Duo’s oddly– satisfied mood. He hesitated, then tentatively slid his arm about Duo’s waist, trying vainly to judge whether he was holding too tight or too loosely. Duo cast him a surprised look, but accepted the gesture, and Quatre breathed a sigh of relief somewhere deep in his gut. ‘Friends?’ he ventured.

‘We never weren’t,’ Duo said, and they walked outside into the sunlight together.


	16. Sixteen

‘Heero?’ Quatre repeated, shocked. ‘I can’t believe he just walked in.’

‘Isn’t that what he always does?’ Duo laughed as he accepted yet another coffee from Sally. While the older woman strapped herself back into her seat opposite Quatre, Duo added, ‘Isn’t it weird? That we were just talking about him, and then all the sudden he shows up. Maybe it’s stupid, but I have a good feeling about this. Khushrenada just had the jump on us. Chang knows how we operate and he used it to keep us in the dark until it was too late. And Barton’s one smart SOB.’

Quatre exhaled hard. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, looking out his window at the bright blue sky and radiant clouds.

Sally kicked Duo’s boot with her own. ‘Shuddap,’ she said companionably. ‘Look... no-one’s brought this up yet, Quatre, but there’s something I want to say. It doesn’t seem coincidental to me that they chose the IEO. And that you’re not on it right now.’

That made him look back. ‘I know,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ve been thinking about it.’ He shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Wufei encouraged me to join the first tour,’ he added.

‘Maybe that was what gave them the idea,’ Duo suggested. ‘I mean, hell. I could probably tell you the entire nine-month schedule. You didn’t think about anything else for three months before you launched.’ He sipped his coffee carefully, blowing on the surface to cool it. ‘It is convenient that you’re not on the ship, though,’ he mused. ‘Barton knew you weren’t, since I called him about your surgery.’

‘They could have pushed up their plans to take advantage of your absence,’ Sally agreed. ‘Why contend with a Gundam pilot if you don’t have to?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Quatre pulled the shade down over the window as the sunlight grew too bright to look at. ‘Anyway. So where’s Heero stationed?’

‘Officially he’s working on locating the IEO and getting us in contact with it. Unofficially he’s also looking for the origin of the warheads.’ He drank from his coffee again, and Quatre considered saying something about caffeine intake, but decided it would be wiser to just stay silent. ‘Meanwhile, Une’s convincing Brussels to keep his shorts on.’

‘He’s not seriously considering acceding to Khushrenada’s demands?’

‘He didn’t last time, but twice in one presidency is probably enough to convince the man that God has his number on speed-dial,’ Sally said with a sly grin. ‘He’s been down-playing rumours that he’ll run for a second term. Even if we run a clean op and put Khushrenada out of business for good, I don’t think we’ll see his name on the ballot again.’

‘Too bad,’ Duo said. ‘I voted for the bastard.’

Quatre had to smile at that. ‘I didn’t know you voted.’

‘I know you don’t,’ Duo countered. ‘I always thought that was weird.’

He lifted one hand and let it fall in a gesture of apathy. ‘Sometimes– I don’t know. I guess I don’t feel like it matters anymore what I think. I didn’t fight a war for a specific party. As long as they’re not Romafeller, minor policy disagreements don’t bother me.’ There were five major parties in the Senate as it was, and they kept most of the big issues grid-locked while under-the-table deals accounted for the necessity of running the ESA. Not being affiliated with a particular party had made it both easier and harder to get the IEO pushed through last year’s spring term, and three of the key members who’d been on his side had been voted out of office immediately after they’d passed the bill allocating funds.

‘We’ve got a short layover in Spain,’ Duo said eventually. ‘Think you’ll recognise the place– Dorada.’

Quatre dropped his head back against the seat cushions. ‘Do all roads actually lead there, or does it just feel like it?’

‘Well, it is the most convenient port,’ Duo said, but he was smiling. ‘It’s the only marina in the area big enough to refuel a ship the size of the Longhorn, and we’re picking up a number of swiftboats from them, too. It should take about an hour to get it all ready.’

‘We’re cutting it awfully close, aren’t we?’ Quatre asked seriously. ‘Even if we run at full-speed, we’re just going to make it.’

‘Wufei can count as well as the rest of us,’ Sally said drily. ‘He could speculate how long it would take us to pull together a team and set the op in motion.’ She crossed her legs and sank deeper into her seat. ‘We can’t forget that they have hostages. As long as there’s a chance the crew of the IEO are still alive, we can’t just carpet bomb the ship and try to contain the nuclear damage.’

It was something he hadn’t wanted to ask. He liked to think that Wufei and Trowa would value innocent lives. There were thirty-three people on the IEO. But there had been ten wardens in Lyaksandro Prison, and only two of them had walked away from that attack.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘About why you ruled out an amphibious assault.’

‘We didn’t rule it out,’ Duo said. ‘We just couldn’t think of a way to make it work.’

‘Deck Five Launch Bay can’t be closed. It’s got a storm crash, but there’s a fail-safe on the outside for that. I know the key.’

‘We know,’ Sally said, puzzled. ‘We took it into account, I promise. We also had to account for the fact that they’re going to expect someone to enter at their weak point. And for the IEO’s surveillance capacity. They’d see us coming on a dozen different monitors before we even got within missile range. They’re going to see the Longhorn coming, too.’

‘But here’s the thing,’ Quatre said, leaning forward. ‘Most of the sensory equipment on the IEO is geared toward oceanography. Even the roving satellites are calibrated more toward sonar, conductivity, salinity, current movement... You have to know how to read those. The biggest danger we’re really facing is from the video feed and perimetre monitors.’

‘It’s not an inconsiderable amount of danger,’ Sally interrupted. ‘And they’ve been on that ship long enough to have added their own equipment.’

‘Where they can, yes, but water-cams can only penetrate to a certain depth, and it’s not like the ocean is empty– there’s a lot to pick up on radar. Besides, anything they add inside and out has to be linked to one of three points, with the bridge holding all primary systems.’ He held up his hand to forestall her comment. ‘I know I’m not making a good case yet. I’m just trying to think my way through it.’

Duo was watching him closely. ‘And?’ he encouraged. ‘What are you thinking of?’

‘I think any surveillance can be fooled,’ he said slowly. ‘And our chances of success are higher because Khushrenada’s people are military, not scientists. And... and the majority are colonists, aren’t they? People who have about as much experience in the water as you and I do. That’s a big, scary world, Duo, with a lot of strange things in it.’

Duo acknowledged that with a bit of a grin. ‘I took Deathscythe into the Sea of Japan my first week on Earth. I almost peed my shorts when I saw a shark. I didn’t know fish that big existed– or that they had that many teeth. It was all I could do not to take a swipe at it with my thermal weapon, and I had several tons of Gundamium armour.’

Sally’s lips were pursed. ‘All right,’ she conceded, ‘I see where you’re going with this. But you still haven’t told us how to get a team to that launch bay safely.’

‘Maybe not a team. Maybe– maybe just one person.’

‘No,’ Duo said, and Sally was barely a beat behind. ‘First of all,’ Duo said, and now it was him leaning forward, ‘we’ve got no way of getting one person in without encountering all the same problems as before. Secondly, I am not sending you in on your own!’

‘And I’m in full agreement,’ Sally growled. ‘I can’t even begin to list the risks in that.’

‘But what if I had a plan,’ Quatre tried. ‘What if I could get to the ship, get into the launch bay without being noticed? Having a man on the inside could be the difference between nine warheads exploding in the Atlantic and capturing Khushrenada with minimal bloodshed.’

‘Do you have a plan?’ Duo demanded.

‘Yes,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But it’s going to sound absolutely crazy and... I’m not sure you’re going to believe me.’

‘That’s not a good start,’ Sally muttered. She lifted a knuckle to her mouth, biting lightly as she considered him. ‘I’m willing to listen with an open mind,’ she said finally. ‘But I won’t guarantee anything more than that.’

‘Duo?’

Duo was glaring at him. ‘You’ve gotten everything else you wanted so far, haven’t you?’ he said sourly. ‘Why the hell not?’ He subsided when Quatre, guilty, looked away. ‘Fine,’ he said in a much softer tone. ‘I promise to listen. But that’s all I promise.’

It was as good as he was going to get, and he knew their reservations would only change to outright hostility if he tried to bargain for anything more. Besides; it sounded crazy even to him.

‘You know I’ve got– some kind of empathic ability,’ he began cautiously. Duo shrugged and nodded, and to his surprise, so did Sally. Apparently she really did take an interest in the Gundam pilots, if she knew something that very few people still alive did. ‘It seemed to be part of my heart condition,’ he added vaguely. ‘Sometimes when people I cared about were hurt, I would have pain in my chest and it was like I was in their bodies, not mine. But it was only for– really horrible moments, times of incredible loss or sadness. Sometimes other deep emotions, if they were strong enough. When I was younger it was worse. I didn’t even know that what I was feeling came from other people before my MVPS was diagnosed and I started taking medication. For months I felt like I was wrapped in cotton batting– it was like I couldn’t hear suddenly. Everything was fuzzy and indistinct. H– the man who built my Gundam– he was the one who really figured out the connection. I think now he was trying to design Zero System to interact with it somehow. But that’s not the point of this.’

He drew a deep breath for strength, and spoke even more carefully than before, trying to find exactly the right words. ‘Since the surgery it’s been different. It’s like the cotton’s been taken away. It’s like– I’m not entirely sure how to explain it, but it seemed like everyone was being so open with their feelings. Or I’d started noticing more. But two nights ago I realised that it was whatever this ability is. Something about the surgery brought it back.’ He looked at Duo. ‘I know how angry you are with me. And I know that a big part of it is that you’re scared I’ll die. You’ve lost a lot of people you cared about. In your mind, I was safe as a civie. And my presence here is distracting you from what you need to do– and, I’m sorry for that.’

Duo flushed a little, his eyes darting to Sally and away. ‘How do you know this has to do with being psychic?’ he said, a little defensively. ‘Maybe you just know me really well.’

‘I like to think I do,’ Quatre said, and managed a little smile. ‘Look, let me finish, or I’ll never get this all out.’ He licked his lips. ‘You remember how the other night, I left the hotel?’

‘Snuck out,’ Duo retorted. ‘You scared the crap out of me.’

He didn’t let himself get sidetracked by apologising again. ‘I woke up because someone was calling me. I went down to the beach, way out past the jetties. It was Albert.’

‘Albert?’ Sally asked, raising an eyebrow. But Quatre was watching Duo, who was starting to turn a little red around the ears.

‘A dolphin,’ Duo said flatly. ‘You snuck out in the middle of the night because a dolphin called you? What did it use, the ‘vid?’

‘I could understand him,’ Quatre said. ‘Earlier that day, at the Aquarium, I thought he spoke to me. He did. That night on the beach, I could understand everything he was thinking. It wasn’t quite talking... but I just knew. I can get to Deck Five Launch Bay, Duo. Albert can take me there.’

‘All right, this is a little weird for me,’ Sally confessed. There was a deep frown creasing her forehead. ‘Back up. Albert is a dolphin?’

‘I spent a lot of time learning to swim with Albert in Dorada,’ Quatre told her. ‘I don’t know if it helped that we already had a connection, that he knew me. But when Duo and I went back after my surgery, something had changed. I know he can take me to the IEO. We went into deep water that night–‘

‘You went into deep water with a god-damn dolphin?’ Duo exploded. ‘You were just wearing a wet suit! No-one knew where you were! What the hell were you thinking, Quatre, you could have drowned and no-one would ever have known!’

‘I know,’ he said, trying to keep his voice calm. ‘But I also knew that wouldn’t happen. He wanted me to see what he sees. That was all. The point is that I know it can work. I was out with Albert that night for almost four hours and he brought me back exactly where we started. The Longhorn has its own launch bays, right? We take Albert with us. He and I launch before you get within radar range of the IEO. Send me with an arsenal if it makes you feel better, but I can get on the IEO on Deck Five and no-one on the ship will even know I’m there. I know how to access the bridge from the dry labs. At the very least I can create some distractions, maybe free the crew.’ Neither agent looked remotely convinced. He tried again. ‘We all know I bullied my way onto your team. So use me. You’ve got expert marksmen and a bomb squad and you’ve got a good strategy for eliminating the warheads. You don’t need me tagging along to help with any of that. Put me where I can help. Inside my ship. I know every corridor and every piece of equipment. I can set off enough alarms to keep them chasing me until you’re within range. It’s one more edge.’

He thought he had Sally. She was thoughtful, anyway. But when she spoke, he knew instantly that she didn’t believe him. ‘I can’t tell Une we’re adding a dolphin to the team,’ she said, trying to sound amused and not quite making it past annoyed.

‘She knows you were continuing to consider an amphibious assault.’

‘With divers and manned subs and attack boats,’ she replied cooly.

‘Duo,’ Quatre appealed.

‘I don’t have time to think about this,’ Duo said, and turned his face away. ‘You don’t spring this shit on me two hours before we begin a black op.’

He switched back to Sally. ‘At New Edwards Base you called on Heero Yuy to shut down the missile detonation that Une had ordered. There was absolutely no reason to think a fifteen year old boy who’d just been tricked into killing all hope of peace between Earth and the colonies could manage the impossible, but you believed in him.’

That made her scowl at him. ‘That’s completely different.’

‘You’re right. I’m not Heero Yuy, and I’m just asking for permission to board a boat.’

‘Say we authorise this,’ Sally challenged him, folding her arms under her breasts. ‘And you and your dolphin go out into the ocean. And something goes wrong. Maybe the dolphin decides the fun is over and he leaves you stranded.’

‘I’ll wear a GPS locator,’ Quatre said. ‘You can pick me up after the operation is over. If it goes south, then we’re all dead anyway.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m fully aware of the risks. I’m not saying I’m not a little scared. But drowning isn’t a lot different from being shot down, and I’m at risk of that whether I go over the top with you or sneak in through the Launch Bay.’

Duo spoke, still glowering at the wall. ‘I want proof,’ he said briefly.

That threw him. ‘Proof,’ Quatre repeated. ‘All right. Well– we’ll be at the marina anyway. Come with me to the Aquarium. I have to ask him, after all.’

‘You mean you can’t just order him?’ Duo muttered snidely. Then he grimaced. ‘I am scared of losing you,’ he said even more quietly. His long fingers were clenched around his coffee cup. ‘Damn it, Quatre. I just barely got reconciled to you being on the team. Now you want me to throw you off into the deep end. Literally.’

‘I know Albert isn’t the same as a Gundam,’ Quatre answered gently. ‘But I trust him all the same, to watch out for me, to get me where I need to be. Just like I trust you to get your ass on the ship so I’m not alone out there in hostile territory.’

‘All the same, I’m going to hope your dolphin’s on vacation.’

It took an effort to keep his relief off his face. He only nodded solemnly, and kept his mouth shut.

They didn’t talk again until they landed. Sally, he knew, had passed beyond sceptical into concerned for his mental agility; and she was taking her lead from Duo, who had grown stubborn in the final half-hour and now wore a slightly belligerent expression. It almost made Quatre sorry he’d brought it up, but he knew in his gut that it could work. Would work, if they’d only let him try. He didn’t think yet about what he would do if they wouldn’t. He concentrated all his effort on maintaining a game face: ready but relaxed, confident but not cocky. They had to believe he was capable as much as Albert. If he was honest, and he tried to be, the past week with Duo had probably not been a rousing testament to his undaunted strength. And the flight was tiring him, the pressure in the cabin producing an ache in his chest and faint nausea in his stomach. He managed to wrangle a tomato juice from the stock in the back without arousing any suspicion. He changed his mind, and got two– forcibly removing Duo’s coffee cup and replacing it with the second juice, and getting a glare for his effort. But they didn’t speak, and Duo drank the juice and got some colour back in his face, and Sally smirked at him a little as if to say she was impressed, but not that impressed.

When the landing gear came down and they were strapping themselves in, Duo dropped the other shoe. ‘All right, Sparky,’ he told Quatre gruffly. ‘You’ve got half an hour to get to the marina and– ask the dolphin if it wants to come with you. And convince the marina staff to let the dolphin go.’ He snapped his belt and tightened it. ‘And convince me that this crazy idea will work.’

‘It will,’ Quatre answered. ‘You’ll see.’

‘No, I won’t.’ Duo jerked his chin at Sally. ‘She will. One of us has to oversea the loading of the Longhorn. But if you convince Sally, then I’ll take you both at your word.’

Quatre glared at him while Sally began to chuckle. ‘I hate it when you think you’re being clever,’ he muttered at Duo. It was clever, though, and probably too clever. Duo at least accepted that Quatre could sometimes know what others were feeling. Sending him out to the marina with the Sally was tantamount to shutting him down. Then he sighed, and corrected himself. Duo wouldn’t do that to him, not after agreeing to hear him out. Duo was just trying to make sure that the final decision was made by someone who wasn’t manipulated by their friendship and their history. And he was right to do that. So he summoned a smile instead.

‘It’s a deal,’ he said firmly.


	17. Seventeen

‘Parada! Usted no puede entrar allí!’

‘Oh,’ Quatre said, flushing at the security guard. ‘You see, we have permission– I’m sorry, is there a manager or something–‘

‘Let me handle this,’ Sally advised him, unclipping her badge from her belt and calmly holding it out to the guard. ‘¿Etiende el inglés?’ she asked the older man easily.

‘Si,’ he said, ‘yes. Some.’ He squinted at her badge, but moved his hand away from his comm and the baton that hung next to it in a holster. ‘You are Preventers?’

‘I’m Field Commander Water,’ Sally told him in that firm but relaxed voice. ‘This is Field Agent Firebrand. We’re with the launch from the marina. We’re going to the dolphin tanks now.’

The man looked nervous, but he nodded his acceptance and stood aside for them. They weren’t quite out of earshot when he started speaking rapidly in Spanish into his comm, but Sally didn’t look back. ‘We tread on a lot of local toes in this business,’ Sally said to Quatre. ‘I don’t begrudge them a little reassurance. But I don’t let it slow me down, either.’

‘I think you just like waving the badge about,’ Quatre teased.

She grinned down at him. ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘Now, where are we going?’

‘Doors to your left.’ It was a Sunday, and the tanks were supposed to be closed to the public, though Quatre saw a few staff members lurking as they passed back into the sunlight outdoors. No-one moved to stop them again, and Quatre surmised that word of their presence had spread– that, or the staff recognised their uniforms more quickly than the security had. It still felt strange to him to be wearing one, and the shoulder and hip holsters he wore beneath his jacket were always surprising him if he moved too quickly. He hadn’t worn them often during the war– he’d spent the majority of his time then trying to look like an innocent teenager, and guns hadn’t done him much good inside Sandrock.

‘There,’ he said briefly, pointing toward the restricted-access stairwell that would take them to the training tanks. There were no sounds in the dolphin area, but somehow he wasn’t worried. A sense of presence nibbled at the edges of his awareness, like a nearby smell that was familiar. What he was worried about was how to go about phrasing his– request. He hadn’t lied when he’d said that he’d understood Albert that night, but Albert had been doing most of the talking– thinking– communicating. Quatre had merely agreed, and trusted. And he had always been the one to receive emotions, never, to his knowledge, projecting them to others the way they did to him. He unhooked the chain strung across the stairwell door, and gestured Sally to proceed him. The stairs were little more than steps to bring them up two metres higher than the viewports. They stood level with the ocean when they emerged, onto the same portico where he had first met Kathleen Ehrlich. The changing rooms and equipment sheds were empty, there were no conversations carried on in bright Spanish voices, and the surface of the tank was a healthy brackish green– but still no sign of dolphin fins.

‘Well?’ Sally asked him, leaning on the rubber-padded railing that ran the edge of the tank at waist-height. Waist-height on her, anyway.

Quatre shed his jacket, dropping it on one of the benches behind him, and approached the rail with a confidence he didn’t feel. After a moment, he dipped his hand into the water, finding it colder just below the surface where the sun had warmed it. On an impulse, he plunged both arms in up to the elbow, watching the disappear into the murky water.

 _Albert,_ he tried, flinging the thought out there. As soon as he did it he felt ridiculous. Albert wasn’t really the dolphin’s name, after all; it had been given to him by humans. He remembered what Albert had called him, when they’d met again at the tank with Duo. He amended it with a smile, and tried gain.

_Big-friend? Big-friend, are you there?_

Nothing was happening. He tried not to think about what he must look like to Sally. He leaned a little further into the water, until it began to soak the short sleeves of his shirt. _Big-friend!_ he called. _Big-friend, I need you. Please answer._

It hit him like an electric shock, and he reeled away from the water with a gasp, splashing all over himself as he tried to wrap his chest within the safety of his arms. His heart was thumping wildly.

‘Quatre?’ Sally demanded, coming to his side. ‘What happened?’

‘I think he heard me,’ Quatre told her weakly. ‘It’s– never felt like that before. With him.’ Actually, it felt a great deal like it had when Heero had self-destructed that awful day five years ago. He shook his head to clear it, and forced himself to lower his arms and relax his shoulders. ‘Water,’ he said.

Sally’s thin eyebrows climbed. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Water,’ he tried to explain. ‘Well– it is a conductor. Especially salt water.’

She was staring at him. ‘I don’t know if I’m just getting used to you,’ she said at last, ‘but I think that made sense.’ He grinned at her shakily. ‘So... Albert’s coming?’ she asked a moment later.

‘Yes. He was nearby. They were eating.’ The taste of raw fish was suddenly in his mouth, and he had to fight off a sensation of triumph and fierce enjoyment that he knew didn’t come from himself. ‘He was with Camus, I think. Silly-friend.’

‘Silly friend?’ Sally repeated curiously, guiding him over to a bench. He gave her no resistance, though he did try to sluice the water from his arms as he sat. ‘Silly-friend,’ he confirmed. ‘I’m little-friend... sort of. Albert is an older dolphin, a bit of leader. He and Camus were caught by fishers and injured. They were both brought here for recovery. They’ve stayed together since.’

‘You make them sound a little– well, human,’ Sally said, watching him closely.

‘They are,’ he shrugged. ‘But they’re not. They’re more open in some ways, but his thoughts...’ Quatre trailed off. ‘They’re like impressions,’ he decided at last. ‘Layers and layers of impressions, but with meaning.’

She looked fascinated despite herself. But she managed to tamp it down, and the mask he was starting to think of as Agent Water came down over her genial features. ‘It’s interesting, but it’s not quite what we meant by "proof,"' she told him. ‘And we’re losing time.’

He was saved from answering as they were hailed by a high-pitched whistle. Quatre stood again, and Sally was only a beat behind him as a pair of dorsal fins came arcing through the water, appearing and disappearing and coming ever closer. When they reached the tank, Quatre was already at the railing, putting his hands back in the water. Camus performed a beautiful jump for them, chittering happily as he landed broad-side on the surface and showered them with sparkling water-drops. Sally blinked, but then she laughed, and brushed off her face.

Albert came sedately to the rail, sticking his head out of the water and floating close enough to accept Quatre’s eager hands. Quatre took several moments to stroke over Albert’s blunt nose and wet hide, re-establishing their physical connection before attempting to speak to the dolphin again. _Big-friend,_ he whispered between them, rubbing the sensitive zone where Albert’s snout joined his forehead.

Albert whistled, and spat a small stream of water at him playfully. Quatre laughed as it doused his trousers. ‘I might as well have gotten in the tank, huh,’ he said aloud. But then he sobered. Without thinking about it, he grabbed Sally’s hand, and brought her close enough to touch Albert’s head. She gasped slightly as he planted her hand above Albert’s eye.

‘This is Sally,’ he said to Albert, reinforcing it with the first images of Sally that came to his mind– Sally gazing at him with amusement and concern in the cafeteria. Sally hovering protectively over Duo on the plane when her younger partner wasn’t watching her. Sally turning her face up to the warm Dorada sun when she stepped off the plane, her eyes sliding closed and the tension leaking out of her for just a moment. _We can trust her,_ he tried to explain, not sure if he was really conveying that. _She’s a friend, too._

Albert seemed to accept that. He bobbed his head under water, pulling away from their hands. But he was back a moment later, content to just hover at the rail, close enough for Quatre to reach him if he wanted to. Quatre decided to hold back for a moment, just letting his hands dangle in the water as he leaned on the rail. Sally was right; he had to find a way to ask what he needed. And there was no sure way to go about it.

He let the sun on the back of his head seep a little deeper into him. He let his eyes close, and focused on the sensation of his hands floating in the little waves of the tank, his fingers loose, his palms caressed. He let the feelings from the past day out of the box he’d been holding them in.

The hurt. The betrayal. The anger, and the helplessness. His determination to make it right. The part of him that was absolutely sure that they would succeed because they had to, because they had before. His fear that they would fail.

He was aware of Camus coming closer, of Albert’s quiet listening. He let them see the IEO, his love for the people on board. His constant battle to make Ehrlich accept him, his new hesitance with Mostyn who thought of him as a child in need of protection. He let them see his first sunrise on the IEO, feel the chilly breeze as he had felt it, raising gooseflesh on his arms and neck and tearing his eyes as dusky blue became orange and pink, as the last of the stars faded from sight and dawn brought another light to the world.

He knew distantly that there were tears on his face, but it seemed very far away.

When he had shown them all of him, he felt strangely empty, but cleansed. And they returned everything he had given with gentle affection and acceptance.

 _I need you,_ he told them. _Something only we can do. Something I think I must do._

 _Small-friend,_ Albert said, and that was enough.

Quatre opened his eyes. And found himself lying on his back on the concrete, with Sally Po leaning over him, worry and awe mixed on her face and his jacket bundled beneath his head.

‘Thank God,’ she said when she saw him looking. She released his wrist, taking his pulse. ‘You just sank to your knees, and then you fell over. As if you were in a– a trance.’

His hands still felt like they were in the water. He had to look to be sure, but though the sensation faded, it didn’t go away. He rolled his head to his right, and found two dolphin heads floating just behind the glass, unblinking eyes waiting for his gaze.

He sighed, and sat up on his elbows. ‘I’m going to need some gear,’ he said. He had to squint to see her, framed by the sun at her back. ‘If you agree?’

She released a long-held breath and sat back on her heels. ‘My head tells me I shouldn’t,’ she told him frankly. ‘But... shit,’ she added, sounding so like Duo suddenly that Quatre couldn’t help the genuine grin that spread over his face. To his surprise, she returned it, only a little reluctantly. ‘Let’s find that gear, then,’ she said. ‘And figure out how to get your dolphins on the ship.’

 

**

 

The Marina had offered– reluctantly– the use of temporary transportation enclosures. With the help of a few staff and three agents, Quatre supervised loading the dolphins onto the Longhorn’s lower well-deck. The enclosure was little more than a converted life-raft filled with water and two surprisingly patient mammals; Quatre himself was anxious, aware that they were getting close to their launch and that any delay he caused would be incredibly detrimental. Sally had disappeared to the bridge to take over last-minute preparations with the crew, and the three agents who had been assigned to help him seemed content to give him odd looks and not question his last-minute addition to the plans.

Duo made an appearance just as Quatre directed his team of five to points on all sides of the enclosure, so they could push and pull it over the sill and off the wet deck for the duration of their journey. He had clambered inside the enclosure itself, on his knees between the two dolphins, so he could drape them with wet blankets and keep them calm during the bumpy ride. Duo wore an odd expression when, huffing and puffing, they finally got the enclosure stabilised and strapped down inside. Quatre tossed him a lopsided smile, and announced, ‘We’re good to go.’

‘So is my better judgement,’ Duo muttered. He rubbed a hand over his braid at the back of his neck. ‘Johnson, Tutura, go get dried off and suited up. Gruffydd, what are you doing down here?’

‘Switched with Levy, sir,’ the one named Gruffydd said. He was perhaps ten years older than them, sweating profusely and thoroughly soaked from the waist down, but he was grinning like a toddler with a treat. ‘Always wanted to work with dolphins.’

Quatre laughed at that, though Duo grimaced at him. ‘Stop seducing my bomb squad,’ Duo complained. But he was tentatively reaching out himself, before he noticed what his hand was doing and snatched it back. He took a cautious step backward. ‘T minus three minutes,’ he added. ‘Let’s get that gate up so we can leave.’ He nodded to the marina staff, and said, ‘Thanks for your help. I’ve already alerted HQ about your expenses, and you’ll receive compensation shortly.’

A young woman who was one of the dolphin trainers answered in accented but clear English, ‘If our dolphins help to save the world, that is payment enough!’ She blushed quickly, though, and she and her partner hurried back to the edge of the wet deck and the dive boat they’d used to tug the enclosure to the Longhorn. Within seconds, they had the motor running. The girl waved once before they sped out of sight.

‘Save the world,’ Duo muttered. ‘They’re optimistic down here.’

‘I thought you had a good feeling?’ Quatre asked, snagging the hose from the wall and turning it on to a gentle stream, carefully spraying down Camus, who looked driest. Duo looked up at him, and slowly his grin returned.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I do. And from the look of it, you do too. I thought in the plane– well, you didn’t look like you do now. I think you believe it, now.’

Quatre smiled at him. ‘I do,’ he agreed. He licked his lips, and reached for Duo’s hand. Duo let him take it, and he squeezed hard. He hadn’t tried it on a person yet, but he let himself open to Duo the way he had to Albert and Camus.

‘Tickles,’ Duo commented, blinking.

Quatre let him go. ‘Sorry. I guess I don’t know quite what I’m doing.’ He didn’t miss the way Duo touched his chest, as if it hurt. Then Duo leaned down and hugged him quickly about the neck.

‘You do,’ he said. ‘I love you too.’


	18. Eighteen

The wetsuit was full-length and fit well enough, a little too loose about the shoulders and waist and too long in the legs, but Quatre reminded himself that he wasn’t buying it, just borrowing. It came with gloves that buttoned to the sleeves, and a tight hood that left only the circle of his face from eyebrows to chin bare.

Sally Po reappeared carrying a Vector Pro BC jacket, and Duo came immediately after with the Aqualung diving regulator and Octopus. The two Preventers helped Quatre don the jacket and buckle it securely at the shoulders, cummerbund and chest, and he checked the gauge console, buoyancy and weight modules himself. Albert and Camus, sensing they were nearing the excitement, began to chatter; Quatre reached a hand into the enclosure to rub Albert’s snout, silently admitting to his own state of tense expectation.

Duo doubled checked him as Quatre sat on the bench running the wall of the bay and strapped on his flippers. ‘We just heard from Heero,’ he said. ‘He’s still got coordinates on the IEO’s position. We’ve transferred live feed to your GPS. Will the dolphins understand that?’

‘They probably won’t need it,’ Quatre reminded him gently. ‘They have their own echolocation.’

‘Humour me,’ Duo said drily. ‘Something else– he and Benson are flying to Brussels. Heero thought that if they could break into Barton’s personal system they might find some evidence– passcodes or evidence or something.’ He frowned down at Quatre. ‘You could into Space with all this crap.’ He tightened the left shoulder strap again, and forced his hands down to his side. ‘Show me where you’ve got the gun.’ Quatre obediently touched the utility pocket at his side where his Beretta handgun was stored in a water-proof seal. Duo scowled down at it. ‘I’d still be happier if we could get another piece on you,’ he added.

‘If I put on much more equipment, we’ll lose the advantage of speed,’ Quatre told him. He was a little reluctant himself, but immediate practicality had to outweigh what would be practical once he got on the ship. Duo had already pushed the Longhorn well over the safety margin to ensure they’d have some night cover left when they entered the IEO’s waters. Quatre had been uneasily sure that he’d felt the ship shudder more than once as they ran at the dangerous speed of thirty-four knots, not the thirty of which the Longhorn was dependably capable. They were perhaps an hour out from the IEO now, and only a greying of the sky and ocean outside the lowered wet-deck gate indicated that false dawn was upon them. A dense morning fog had already arisen, and flooded the wet deck with a dewy chill that Quatre could feel even through the wet suit. The fog was their first real blessing; it would be worse for the inexperienced sailors on the IEO, if it didn’t burn off too quickly. It also kept visibility poor and light low, an advantage for Quatre more than anyone else.

‘Watch the cameras,’ Duo repeated for at least the fifth time. ‘They’re going to expect us to try an underwater approach.’

Sally laughed. ‘Yes,’ she allowed, dropping a hand to Quatre’s shoulder. ‘But we’re dealing with colonials, and Quatre’s the only spacer I know who talks to dolphins. I think we’ll have the element of surprise on this one.’

Quatre drew a deep breath, and let it out through his nose. ‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ he agreed. ‘Besides, I’m relying on you to distract our friends on the IEO.’

‘I’ll do my job,’ Duo promised, wearing his crooked grin. It faded a little, though he managed to keep it in place. ‘But you take care of yourself. Don’t try to board if you think you can’t. We’ll pick you up– someday.’

‘It will work,’ Quatre assured him confidently. ‘I trust you. So trust me.’

Duo bent to hug him quick and hard. ‘I do,’ he murmured. ‘More than I’d trust just about anyone. Don’t get killed, buddy.’ He squeezed extra tightly, then released Quatre reluctantly. ‘Good luck,’ he said more formally. He nodded to Sally, and left as if he wouldn’t allow himself to look back. Quatre watched him go, feeling a fluttering in his stomach that brought back memories of a darker time.

A time Trowa and Wufei were doing their best to resurrect. Quatre breathed deeply again, and fitted his goggles over his eyes. He pressed Sally’s hand, and said, ‘Wish me luck too?’

She grinned at him. ‘I’m sort of betting you don’t need it.’ She tentatively stroked Camus’s rubbery hide. ‘Time’s against you,’ she warned him grimly. ‘It will be dawn by the time you reach the ship.’

A dolphin carrying a human would be lucky to make twenty-four knots without serious injury. Quatre only nodded tensely. The four agents who’d been hovering in the back of the wet deck by the landing craft came forward at Sally’s gesture and took up positions around the enclosure. Quatre flipped on his chest-mounted torch, and slipped between two of the men to grasp the steel edge, planting his feet to let his lower body do most of the hard work. Sally said, ‘Go!’ and all together, they pushed the enclosure and the dolphins over the sill of the wet deck, sliding it out onto the deck grating until it began to float in the half-dozen inches of water there. Quatre and the team gave it a final push, and it sank off the edge of the deck.

Albert and Camus slipped free and into the water with squeals of relief and joy. Quatre let the other agents worry about retrieving the enclosure on its nylon tethers, inserting his regulator between his teeth and taking a few experimental breaths. He turned back in the ankle-deep water to find Sally right next to him, sweat and fog gathering damply in her hair.

She inclined her head to him, and he returned the gesture. Then he waded to the edge of the deck, and jumped off.

He sank into the freezing ocean water only to find Albert rubbing lovingly against him. Quatre returned the caresses, then concentrated on getting a solid grip on the grey strap running Albert’s torso. _Ready?_ he thought, tentatively pushing the emotion behind the words at his dolphin friends. Camus’s mouth, visible in the watery beam of his torch, opened as if he were laughing. Quatre laughed back as Albert pumped effortlessly with his broad tail, and plunged them deep underwater.

They were out of the ship’s shadow a minute later. Though the stream of oxygen from his regulator was normal, Quatre suffered a moment of panic, a sudden certainty that he would drown away from the safety of the ship. He forced himself to close his eyes, not stare wildly at the way his torch only barely illuminated the black water about him for a few feet in circumference, providing little comfort to an imagination that had shot into over-drive. With his eyes closed, he could feel Albert’s solid presence better, nearly three times his size and six hundred kilograms of muscle between him and the endless ocean.

It was definitely cold, though the suit protected him from the worst of it. They had a long way to go. Quatre let himself hang limply from Albert’s powerful body, careful not to inhibit the tail and fins in any way. The dull echoes of Camus’s clicks and shrieks carried to him through the water, but he received more an impression of delight and adventure than a real communication. From Albert, there was only serenity, and focus. They streamed ahead, rising to the surface every five minutes for just the second it took for the dolphins to inhale fresh air. He knew they were stretching the time they could last without breathing in order to keep up their speed, but there was nothing he could do about a decision they’d made without his input. He clung tightly to Albert’s strap as they zipped through the cold water. He did his best not to think about the vast depths below him, of how far he might fall if he lost his handhold. The sensation made him dizzy and ill very quickly, and he forced himself to conjugate the three Spanish verbs he knew until he was sufficiently in control of himself again. He made sure to think about the surface and its comforting nearness, after that.

They’d been traveling for nearly twenty minutes by Quatre’s softly glowing watch when he realised, quite suddenly, that they were no longer alone. Moving cautiously, he directed his torch toward the prickling sensation of presence at his open right flank, and got a start for his effort. There were two dolphins he’d never seen before, swimming alongside Albert and Camus.

He had to grip the strap with his right hand and climb a bit over Alfred’s broad back, but he managed to swing the light toward the left. His suspicion was confirmed. Three more dolphins there.

They were surrounded by a pod.

He’d never know why they’d come to join his mission, but Quatre was slammed with a feeling of deep humility and awe. A lone human almost ten nautical miles away from his ship, and he sensed nothing more than acceptance of his presence with Albert and Camus. He tentatively framed thought the most courteous welcome he would have given royalty, pushing it out toward the stranger dolphins with great caution. From all sides came flickers of greeting, some that felt old, some young, but all of them without that element of familiarity that Albert and Camus had from working with humans. Quatre was nothing more than a strange new variety of fish to this pod. He found himself smiling as he pressed his cheek against Albert’s heaving hide.

He knew they were entering the perimetre of the IEO both by the amount of time elapsed and by the sharp increase of curiosity from the pod. He switched off his torch and made sure none of his gauges were glowing, and Albert slowed to accommodate him as he swung a flippered leg over the dolphin’s back, stretching his arms to grab as much of Albert’s thick body as possible. When he was pressed as close as he could get, they were on their way again, moving closer to a surface that was grey with dawn, not black. Minutes later that Quatre saw a shape resolving out of that blackness. Vague points of light producing silvery blobs became identifiable features, and the chitters and babbles from the dolphins around him rose audibly. They had found the hull.

 _To the back,_ he whispered silently to Albert, thinking very hard about the sub launch bay. He was too turned about to think in terms of direction, and had a very nervous five minutes as they passed the anchor port twice. Now that they were close enough, he could indeed make out the underwater cams and their attached broad-beams. He encouraged Albert to stay toward the bottom of the pod’s formation, broadcasting his thanks over and over again in a mindless mantra. He interrupted himself only when he finally identified the aft by the shape of the hull. As one, the pod turned toward it, sweeping him up to the surface a final time. As his head broke the waves, Quatre instinctively tried to gasp, as though he’d been drowning beneath the weight of the ocean, but got only the steady, satisfied hiss of his regulator. Forcing away the thunderous beat of his own heart, Quatre freed a hand to rip it away from his mouth, and bobbed in place with Albert as he listened intently for alarms.

Nothing. There was no noise but an errant click or two from one of the pod dolphins to split the night air.

The sub launch was on a jutting platform nearly six feet above his head, shifting slowly as waves rocked the huge ship. Getting up to it was the part he hadn’t been able to plan flawlessly. He had something like twenty minutes to board before Duo and the Preventers would arrive to take up station at missile distance from the IEO, and if he was being especially careful, it might take him that long to do it.

Quatre decided not to be especially careful.

He tugged at the zipper of one of his pockets, and freed the military grabber and its long length of silk cable. It would deploy under its own velocity, but he knew beyond doubt that the crash of the metal grappling hook on the metal platform six feet above him could alert anyone on Top Deck to his presence. He unraveled the cable, gave himself perhaps three feet of length, and tried to get a good swing started. He nearly went under for his efforts, and came up sputtering in the waves.

Grinning dolphin snouts tapped him from all sides as he spat salty water from his mouth, and he rubbed affectionately before remembering he wasn’t with animals he knew. But his gesture seemed to be accepted, as he himself had been, and he completed it more respectfully, rubbing up between the eyes.

 _Help,_ he thought he heard. No, not heard, but somehow still understood. Quatre closed his eyes, relying on the dolphins to keep him at the surface, and rested his other hand, the one still holding the cable, on another smooth hide nearby. The grabber dangled by his legs, and he knocked it with a foot.

Jump. An exhilarating rush from deep to air, the weightless leap, the scream of pure freedom. The laughing crash back into the wet, the fantastic slap of impact.

 _Jump._ Quatre opened his eyes, and saw gleaming dolphin eyes staring back at him.

He let go of the useless hook, reminding himself to apologise to Duo later for losing Preventer equipment. When the end of the rope slithered through his hands and he could no longer feel it near him, he kicked off his flippers, and let them fall away as well. He reinserted his regulator, and arranged himself along the hide of the dolphin directly before him, the one who had projected that thought-feeling about the jump. He slid over the dolphin’s back, putting his backside to the dorsal fin and fitting his bare feet into the rough juncture of torso and flipper. He tried not to let himself think how crazy this was, and smoothed a hand down the dolphin’s wide eyeridge. ‘Go,’ he said aloud, needing to hear it.

They plunged back below the surface as the other dolphins spread out to give them room. The dive was hard and fast, and Quatre fought vertigo, pinning his gaze to the dolphin’s back as pressure gathered about his body. Just as he started to get uncomfortable, the dolphin whirled about sharply. He clung as hard as he could as they climbed back, the dolphin’s flukes pumping madly, hard muscles bucking underneath him. He braced himself, thighs tense and knees spring-loaded; and then they burst out of the water as if shot from a canon. He couldn’t repress the wild whoop that tore out of him any more than the dolphin could, though it was strangled by his regulator. Quatre, eyes wide open and screaming like a maniac, flung himself off the dolphin’s back and toward the platform as they passed it.

He hit with what seemed a resounding clash and clang, rolling awkwardly to a stop against the sub winch. Breath knocked out of him, head ringing and limbs still convinced they were flailing in empty air, he listened for and heard the smacking thunderclap of the dolphin’s impact on the waves.

And nothing else. Though he lay still as stone for nerve-wracking minutes, there were no shouts of alarm, no claxons ringing alert, no rush to investigate.

They’d done it. He was on.

He grappled with the jacket, finally managing to free himself and stagger to his feet. He’d acquired some bruises during his brief flight– or at least the hard landing. He ripped the goggles and regulator off his face, and freed his head from the wet hood. Then he crawled to the edge of the platform, and looked over.

His pod were still there, noses turned up toward him in a very serious regard.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered to all of them. ‘Thank you. All of you.’

He knew it was only a trick of anatomy, but their ruthless grins stuck in his mind as they turned and swam away, disappearing beneath the choppy waves. Albert– he knew it was Albert– lingered longer, until Quatre pressed a firm good-bye on him. He waited until he was sure all his friends were gone, and then he scrambled for the shelter of the launch bay.

 

**

 

‘I’m picking something up,’ Nootka announced, bending over his console. ‘Something’s approaching. Small.’

‘Perhaps our enemies have finally decided to join us,’ Wufei answered, striding across the bridge to look at the monitor. ‘We’ve got several objects,’ he reported, frowning.

Mariemaia finished her tea and set aside the chipped mug that had been found for her from the galley. ‘Your predictions were excellent, as always,’ she told Wufei. ‘Exactly when we expected them.’ She turned her chair to face the man standing in the corner. ‘He’s rather brilliant, Captain,’ she added.

Captain Mostyn, bound and gagged and watched by one of the black-clad fake Preventers, could only glare at her. His gaze more than made up for his inability to voice his reply.

‘If we can confine our smirking,’ Trowa said, looking up from his own console– a laptop computer interfaced with the ship’s database and the nuclear guidance system for the missiles on the top deck, ‘then perhaps someone could inform me just what we’re looking at?’

‘Bring up the underwater cameras,’ Wufei instructed Nootka, leaning over him. ‘Heat sensors left screen.’ He turned to the neighbour console, and hit two buttons. The soft roar of white noise that was the ocean filled the bridge. Overlaying it, a sound like a creaking door, followed by a high-pitched squeal that made more than one of them wince.

‘What the hell is that?’ Baker demanded from beside the IEO’s former captain. ‘Some kind of ship?’

Wufei straightened with a little exclamation of disgust. ‘Fish,’ he said flatly. He gestured to the screen, as several large, silvery animals swept past the camera, their bodies flopping sinuously.

‘Dolphins,’ Kozlova said blankly. ‘Those are dolphins. I saw them in a movie once.’

‘Enough staring,’ Trowa told them all. ‘I don’t care if we’ve got man-eating sharks out there. We’re not looking for fish, we’re looking for Preventers with big guns.’ Wufei turned down the audio, but he didn’t turn it off, and his expression was thoughtful. Catalonia left her lounging stance against the window and came to stand next to him.

‘You’re thinking what I’m thinking,’ she said.

Wufei glanced at her. ‘I’m also thinking they’d have to be crazy. There isn’t a ship anywhere near us.’

‘Could they have come from a stealth sub?’

‘It’s fish,’ Trowa emphasised without looking up from his work. ‘When we’ve got torpedoes out there, I’ll start to worry.’

‘He’s right,’ Wufei murmured, and flipped the audio off. ‘We can’t be distracted by every little thing.’

Catalonia scowled. ‘I want to go check on it.’

‘And I want you to shut up,’ Barton retorted, losing his thin patience. ‘Fine. Go. Be back here in ten minutes.’ If he knew she glared hotly at his back, he ignored it, his fingers moving sensitively over the keyboard of his computer. A moment later, she flipped her long hair over her shoulder, a gesture of dismissal as much as it was confidence. She turned sharply on her heel and left the bridge, climbing swiftly down to the top deck and the stairwell below them.

Mariemaia held her empty mug out to Martinez, the young woman who was most often at her side. Martinez padded silently to the cabinet where the coffee and tea brewed, one note of comfort for their tired and high-strung group of rebels. Mariemaia watched her prepare the tea, then looked back at Mostyn, catching him sagging wearily in his bonds.

‘Not much longer, Captain,’ she comforted him. ‘Whether the President steps down or sends innocent soldiers to make war on us– either way, the end is near.’

 

**

 

The sub launch was like a cave, empty but for two large sheet-covered subs slumbering near the launch platform. Quatre had left the dawn light behind when he’d broken past the storm-crash panels. The bay itself was chilly and quite dark, though not, thankfully, as dark as it had been under the night-time ocean. Quatre moved carefully inward, focusing on where he knew the hatch to be on the far right wall. He thought about going back to the platform to retrieve his vest and the torch, but determined that to be an unnecessary risk. He had to proceed undetected for as long as possible. He did stop to free the pouch that held his gun, tearing at the plastic seal.

Something clanged to the metal deck, at least ten feet ahead of him. Quatre ducked into a tight crouch against a lab table, and froze, his hand over the gun.

There was an excruciating pause. Then a light that definitely did not belong to him switched on, revealing a slim body crowned by a generous fall of yellow hair. A woman.

She said, ‘Boys and girls, come out to play; the moon is shining bright as day.’

Quatre could only be grateful that it wasn’t. But any hope he had that the woman didn’t know someone was actually in the bay vanished when she aimed the torch directly at him. He rose tensely, trying to finish freeing his Beretta surreptitiously.

‘No weapons,’ she said sharply. There was a second pause, as Quatre reluctantly dropped his hand. It was too dark to see if the woman had a weapon trained on him. When she laughed suddenly, Quatre’s eyes snapped to her face. ‘Quatre Raberba Winner,’ she said. ‘I thought it might be you.’

He squinted against the beam of the torch. ‘Dorothy,’ he murmured, suddenly recognising her. It was not a very happy moment.

She bowed mockingly. ‘Quick as ever on the uptake.’ She kept the beam squarely in his eyes when he tried to turn his head away from it. ‘I told Barton you’d show up sooner or later,’ she announced. ‘He didn’t believe me. He told me to check it out if it would keep me quiet.’ She switched off the torch abruptly, waited only a second, and flashed it in his face again. Blinded, he snapped his eyes closed, but too late. ‘For a man as in love with his own brains as he is,’ she continued almost lazily, ‘he’s not very smart. I knew you’d come, after all, and I haven’t seen you since... when was it? Ah. When you left me to die on Libra.’

‘That was a rather mutual problem,’ he recalled. ‘At least you were mobile. I had sizeable hole in my abdomen.’

‘And Barton to drag you to safety,’ she retorted. ‘You left me sitting there with the ruins of my entire life about me.’ She came cautiously closer to him. ‘For all your speeches on the necessity of kindness and compassion... I remember the look on your face as you left me behind, Quatre Winner. I remember the hate in your eyes when you looked at me.’

‘You’re mistaken,’ he told her, unobtrusively palming a beaker that sloshed with some liquid. ‘You were hurt and upset. So was I, actually.’

Dorothy came even closer. ‘You never get tired of playing therapist, do you.’ She flashed the beam at him again, but he was ready this time, and managed to close his eyes.

‘How’s this for psychology,’ he said, moving to put the table between them. ‘I’m the one who instituted the Zero System in mobile suit design. I know better than anyone what it was capable of doing to the mind. Whatever you did under its influence was only minimally under your control. It magnified your most violent impulses.’

‘But all this is old history,’ Dorothy said. ‘I find myself with an exciting opportunity. A chance to rectify my mistakes. When Chang told me about the plan to board your ship, I knew you wouldn’t just watch from the sidelines as something so dear to you was used to incite a war.’ She laughed. It was a distinctly unbalanced sound. ‘Still fighting so that people like me will surrender? Still hoping for that elusive Peace?’

‘I have some news for you,’ he said. ‘We had it until you boarded a scientific vessel with nuclear weaponry.’ He judged the distance between them, and launched the beaker at her right arm and the torch. She dropped it with a yell, and Quatre sprinted around the table and toward the hatch.

She recovered almost instantly and was right on him, catching him by the arm and making him stumble. She tripped him with a kick to his shin, and he crashed into a stool. He heard her draw a weapon, but the torch was rolling wildly on the floor, throwing crazed shadows about them. Dorothy clawed her way up his body, and Quatre dropped abruptly to the deck to throw her off. They scrambled across the floor, hitting furniture and tripping over strung power cords. She was between him and the hatch when he finally made it back to his feet, but he couldn’t leave her behind him anyway and expect to move silently through the ship. Quatre ripped a peristaltic pump off a counter top and flung it at her, scoring a solid hit on her shoulder, and followed it with a heavy glass and metal contraption that might have been a rotary evaporator. It sailed over her head and crashed with a violent break against the wall. The ultrasonic bath was a miss as well, but it showered her with liquid and wrung a horrified gasp as she tried to wipe her eyes.

‘Stand down,’ he ordered her. ‘Stand down and I’ll–‘

He knew a moment later that she’d only been faking chemical burn. She leapt for him, her arm arcing viciously, and as she slammed him back into the counter, her knife bit deep into unprotected side.

He felt the impact first, but the pain followed quickly. He punched her across the face and she reeled away, leaving the knife hilt-deep left of his stomach, scraping his hipbone. He wrenched another unit from the wall and threw it, so wide it earned nothing more than an instinctive dodge. Quatre stumbled back, sliding along the counter pressing into his back, gripping the handle of the knife and trying to determine what kind of weapon it was. It was a burning pit of agony running all the way up his torso.

‘Why are you– always– sticking things in me?’ he panted at her, reaching awkwardly for the centrifuge. The pull of muscles away from the wound brought gorge up into his throat. ‘Some kind of– Freudian– fantasy?’ he gritted, and dropped the equipment when his arm spasmed.

A new voice, familiar and furious, shouted, ‘Over here, bitch!’ Both Quatre and Dorothy whirled toward the new arrival, and Dorothy shrieked as an entire rack of fragile test tubes exploded in her face. Quatre glanced quickly at the counter and saw his best bet– a stainless steel bottom corer laid out beside sample plates. He grabbed it with both hands, and swung all three feet of the hollow pipe at Dorothy’s head. It connected with a meaty thunk, and when she went down, she didn’t move.

The light of the torch bobbed, lifted, and came to rest on his chest. Quatre followed it to Kathleen Ehrlich’s pale face.

‘I’ve never been so glad to see someone in all my life,’ he told her, meaning every word.

He wrung a quick, nervous laugh from her. Ehrlich knelt beside Dorothy’s body, checking the carotid pulse. ‘Thready,’ she reported. She shone the torch on the other woman’s head, and whistled softly. Quatre looked, and winced. What had been solid skull before meeting the corer was now a gory mess. He realised he could smell the blood overlaying the salty smell of the ocean, and ran a hand over his nose and mouth.

‘Are you the only one free?’ he asked Ehrlich.

She looked up, and nodded after a moment. ‘When they boarded, they forced us all into our cabins. They brought magnetic locks.’ She stood, and came to his side. ‘You’re bleeding,’ she said, level and calm. It slipped only a little when he moved his hand, and she saw the hilt of the knife. ‘Shit,’ she muttered.

‘Feels about– four inches,’ he explained shortly. ‘Think you can help me remove it?’

‘Sit down first,’ she ordered, and brought him a stool. He sank down gratefully, but stopped her when she moved to touch him. ‘See if there’s something to tie her up with,’ he said, pointing to Dorothy. ‘I don’t want to be interrupted again.’

He waited, forcing himself to breathe slowly and shallowly, to inspect the edges of his wound, to examine the handle. It was leather, and slim, and he thought the knife might be a Nahuarra dagger– a lot of veterans carried them. Lightweight and aggressive, with a double, but thankfully un-serrated, edge. He watched while Ehrlich bound Dorothy at the wrists and ankles with electrical tape, thoughtfully adding a gag.

‘Keep the tape,’ he advised her. ‘We can use it again.’ She returned to his side then with a water bottle from the fridge, and he titled his head back both so he couldn’t see what she was doing to his side, and to look at her face while she worked. ‘Tell me more about what happened.’

‘They came in landing boats,’ she said. ‘We were just off Nova Scotia.’ Her shoulders bunched under her dark tee shirt, and then he felt cold water splashing about the wound. He bit down on a gasp and made himself breathe through his nose. ‘Boarded the same way you did, I guess. I wasn’t down here. They took some of the students hostage and got to the Captain on the bridge. They told us we wouldn’t be harmed if we cooperated, that they weren’t after us, just what the ship could do. Then they started shutting us in the cabins. I heard the seals activate. That was maybe forty hours ago.’

‘How’d you get out?’ he prodded. A painful twinge sparked up through his gut when she wrapped her fingers around the handle. He nodded once, sharply, and she gripped his shoulder with the other hand. He ground his teeth together as she ripped the knife out of him; there was no relief, only renewed pain. She dropped the blade to the counter and pressed her hand to his side. He could feel blood pumping out now that the knife wasn’t blocking it. ‘Tape,’ he grunted.

‘I can make a pressure bandage,’ Ehrlich extemporized. She waited until he replaced her hand with his own, pressing hard against the liquidy source of his hurt. She used the knife to slice a seam of Dorothy’s trouser leg, and was soon rolling a tight package of cloth. She had him hold it to his wound while she cut a long length of tape. ‘I was a Specials officer,’ she told him abruptly. ‘Lieutenant JG. I was at Victoria Base when it was bombed by a Gundam pilot. I got trapped in my room when the blast tripped security codes and locked us in. After that, I always– I always made sure I had more than one way out.’

‘I didn’t know you were military,’ he said. She slipped her arms under his, strapping the tape tight to his waist and trapping the bandage tight to his side. Then she used tape straight off the roll to wrap it again and again.

‘Navy.’ Their faces were close enough, her shoulders brushing his, that he could smell salt and sweat on her hair. ‘What were you?’ she asked, not quite meeting his eyes as she straightened.

He tested the tape, and decided it would hold. He slid off the stool, and felt only a little dizzy. ‘Not a Specials officer,’ he answered.

Her mouth moved in a tiny, crooked frown. ‘We weren’t all bad,’ she muttered. ‘We didn’t all want to take over the colonies. It wasn’t about that for everyone.’

Quatre felt moved to put a hand on her shoulder. They were both wearing his blood now, and somehow that seemed significant. ‘And we didn’t all hate Earth,’ he replied. ‘A lot of bad things happened during the war for bad reasons. The sooner we can get to the bridge, the sooner we can stop it from happening again.’

‘Two to thirteen isn’t great odds,’ she warned him, picking up both the bloody knife and the torch. Quatre bent stiffly and searched Dorothy for a gun. He turned one up in a shoulder holster, and wondered why she hadn’t used it. He flashed it at Ehrlich before checking the magazine and finding it full. ‘Tell me you have back-up coming,’ Ehrlich added as he gave her the gun, and removed his own, finally tearing it out of the plastic and feeling it for dampness. He was relieved to find it dry.

‘There’s a ship full of Preventers on its way,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to make it a little easier for them when they get here.’ He glanced her over. She wore black jeans and a dark shirt, but she was hardly protected. Still, she was already striding toward the hatch, and he had no choice but to follow her. ‘You said thirteen?’

‘At least,’ she confirmed. ‘I never saw all of them, but I listened while they herded us around. What is all this about?’

‘Mariemaia Khushrenada broke out of prison. Her people have brought nuclear weapons. They’re threatening to explode them underwater.’

It took a marine biologist to feel the full horror of that, and he saw it on her face when she spun to stare at him. She’d gone white as a sheet. ‘They wouldn’t,’ she whispered.

‘These are the same people who tried to drop a colony on Earth,’ he said grimly. ‘They want power, and they’ll use war and destruction to get it.’ He stopped her with a light touch. ‘Do you think you could free anybody else? What about the Captain?’

‘Captain’s on the bridge,’ Ehrlich said. ‘I heard one of them say that. As for getting the others out– it took me nearly six hours to break the seal, and I had a mechanical jam.’

‘Are they patrolling?’

‘Not the lower decks.’ She looked at him, then suddenly understood his train of thought. ‘We have network access from the dry lab.’

‘But only to certain systems.’ He pressed against his side, unable to tell if it was wet with new blood or if the pressure bandage was working. ‘They don’t know we’re out. If Catalonia was down here waiting for me, we may have some time before they check on her. If we start crashing systems, we can buy some confusion.’

‘We can set them up to crash on a time trigger,’ Ehrlich said. ‘They’ll have to deploy to look for who’s responsible. We can be waiting by the bridge.’

‘If we go busting in there with a knife and two handguns, they’ll make hamburger out of us.’

‘You have a better idea?’

He thought about it, but they didn’t have long to wait around. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘All right. Let’s get to the dry lab.’ Weapons ready, they opened the hatch quietly and slipped into the passageway. It, too, was dark, though emergency lights were running, spaced twenty feet apart and glowing a golden orange. They moved at a smooth, quick walk toward the ladders. Quatre, because he was smaller, went first, rolling out onto the fourth deck floor and checking both sides of the corridor before calling the all-clear to Ehrlich. She climbed out after him, looking as lethal as any Gundam pilot ever had in her dark clothes, blood-stained hands, and with the brightness of adrenaline and danger in her blue eyes. He found himself grinning, and was surprised when she returned the expression.

As they climbed toward Deck Three, she whispered up, ‘How did you get on the ship, anyway? These terrorists would have noticed a boat approaching.’

Quatre was concentrating on ignoring the deep ache and sting that reaching for the next rung created. He murmured back, ‘I’ll tell you when we’re through with this. I think you’ll like it.’


	19. Nineteen

Heero glanced about the condo as he canvassed the empty rooms, looking for the computers. It was the sort of home you might expect from someone who had lived without one for most of his life– oddly empty of junk, except for a few obviously prized acquisitions like a lamp made out of spare kitchen equipment that Heero vaguely remembered from Catherine Bloom’s circus caravan. But it wasn’t much on his mind to examine Trowa’s lifestyle, and as soon as he found the spare bedroom that had been converted into a computer designer’s dream, he forgot about everything else.

Trowa had a network of seven screens in an arena setup linked through a side-car multi-display interface. The slender notebook that lay demurely closed before those massive screens was shut down. Heero slid the single wheeled chair in the room before the notebook, propped it open and turned it on.

When it prompted him for a passcode, Heero paused and unclipped the comm from his belt. He depressed the ‘talk’ key, and said, ‘I’m in position, Benson.’

_‘I wish you better luck than we’re having here. The office files are wiped.’_

‘I’ll keep you appraised.’

_‘Thanks. Benson out.’_

Heero set the comm beside the keyboard and contemplated the screen. Circumventing the passcode was only a few moments of work, the kind of first-wall someone like Trowa couldn’t be expected to bother with– unless, like Trowa, it catapulted a cascade of safe-modes that offered reams of false files. It was still far more elementary than Heero would have expected from a man who ran his own network security company.

Heero cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, and settled grimly in to strip down Trowa’s defences one by one.

 

**

 

‘Are we ready?’ Quatre asked, his finger hovering over the command key. Ehrlich gestured for him to wait as she typed rapidly at the board of the UDS. A few moments later, she looked up, and nodded tensely.

‘I’m go.’

Quatre gripped his gun left-handed with fingers that were going cold and clammy. They had virtually no chance of finding a real hiding place, but Quatre estimated Duo would be arriving in perhaps fifteen minutes with a boat-load of Preventers. On the other hand, a fire-fight in the dry lab would be disastrous. There was no cover, and even with a clear shot at the door, he and Ehrlich would be exposed to return fire. He wouldn’t make it far in a running shoot out; he could buy Ehrlich time to get to safety if he stayed behind.

‘That’s enough!’

Quatre fired. It was instinct, and it was probably what saved his life. The man who’d discovered them ducked back into the hall to avoid the shot, and Quatre shouted, ‘Go!’ as he slapped the button. Information began to scroll down his screen, then stuttered and abruptly went blue. Locked. He didn’t have a glance to spare for Ehrlich as he charged the door, ducking low, just as the black-clad man who’d discovered them came back, foolishly still aiming at man-height. Quatre hit him with a shoulder in the gut, knocking him up and off-balance. They tumbled into the hallway, the man’s assault rifle stuck between them and pointed harmlessly away. He would hold him off while Ehrlich got away–

Except she was grabbing him by the collar and hauling him back into the dry lab, and she managed to get the rifle as well, just as a barrage of bullets split the air. The shouts of another soldier were cut short as Ehrlich threw the door shut and bolted it.

‘Won’t hold them,’ Quatre panted.

‘No choice.’ Ehrlich slipped under his arm, supporting him with her shoulder as she brought him to his feet. ‘At least we did it. We crashed the bridge.’

And announced their presence. There would be thirteen men outside that door in a minute. They were, Quatre knew, probably going to die. He saw it in Ehrlich’s face, pale but set. She checked the rifle, and gave him Dorothy’s handgun. She left him there, and took position on the other side of the door, her back pressed to the paneled wall.

Quatre managed a dry swallow. He was unbearably thirsty, and knew he’d passed into the second stage of shock. ‘Tell me again how you got out of your bunk,’ he said.

She looked at him. ‘Now?’

‘We’ve got a minute before they storm us. That’s enough time to tell me the truth.’

Her expression was stricken, and he knew beyond doubt that it was an honest reaction. ‘Quatre–‘

‘Just tell me,’ he interrupted.

Her hands flexed on the butt and muzzle of the rifle. ‘All right,’ she said a moment later. ‘Yes, they contacted me. It was right before I met you. That day at Costa Dorada, do you remember?’ Her pale eyes flicked between him and the door as someone tried the handle. They both tensed, unable to make anything of the mumbles they could just hear from the other side; but nothing happened. In a pained undertone she continued, ‘They told me they were looking for someone loyal, someone who didn’t like how things have changed since the end of the war. I told them I’d think about it, and then I went to the Marina to meet you, and you just seemed so smug and sure of yourself. You had all this money you didn’t earn, and you were just a colonial, it didn’t really seem to mean anything to you– you were just this kid out of no-where who’d never worked a day in his life.’

Quatre shook his head. ‘That’s not true,’ he started. Her face twisted, Ehrlich interrupted.

‘I know that now,’ she said softly. ‘I just didn’t want to believe it. When we were all on board together I could see how important it was to you, how you were really interested in everything we were doing. You pulled your weight and– and everyone just liked you and accepted you, but you worked hard to earn it. You knew everyone’s name and where they were from and what they liked to do– you knew things about people I’d worked with for years and didn’t know. And– and then when you got sick, I realised– they’d said they would find a way to get you off the boat, but then when I saw you having that seizure it just– I didn’t think they would hurt you.’

It was the final clue to what he’d already begun to suspect. ‘Trowa switched my meds,’ he said. ‘That was why I was sick. He thought I’d have to leave the boat if I got sick.’

‘I think so.’ Ehrlich looked so miserable when she glanced back at him. ‘Please believe me,’ she pleaded. ‘I didn’t think they’d hurt you.’

He did believe her. He just wished it could change anything. ‘They left you free when they boarded, didn’t they.’ She could only nod. Quatre asked her, ‘Why did you interfere against Dorothy then? Why not let her kill me?’

‘Because– ‘ A heavy thud hit the door, and it shuddered. There seemed to be more voices now. Quatre tensed, both the guns at ready, knowing that when the door finally swung open Ehrlich was going to take the first assault, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Over the second hit, Ehrlich added hurriedly, ‘Because I know you now. And it was so obvious she had a grudge against you, that you’d fought against each other in the war. They told me this was about principles. That they were doing this to right all the wrongs. But it’s just about revenge. They’ve got Hughes up on the bridge with his face beaten in, and they sent that woman down there to murder you– I just couldn’t let it happen.’

He was starting to feel dizzy. He didn’t think he’d lost that much blood, but his side was a mass of hurt, and his limbs felt heavy and achy. His voice was hoarse when he asked her, ‘How am I supposed to trust you now, Kathleen?’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ she said dismally. But then her head came up stiffly. ‘But you need someone at your back, and I’m all you’ve got. This is my ship, too, Quatre, and my crew they’ve got hostage. I have to help fix what I helped make wrong.’

With the third hit, the door splintered. They both flinched back, and Ehrlich did what he’d done, crouch low and aim high. It was a gamble that would probably fail, and then she’d be stuck on her knees under fire, but Quatre understood.

A voice called through, ‘Stand down, and you won’t be harmed!’

It was Wufei’s voice. Quatre discovered there was a large difference between knowing his friend and lover were on the IEO, and having it irrevocably confirmed. Neither he nor Ehrlich answered, and Wufei didn’t ask again. With a fourth hit, the door burst open, and Ehrlich opened fire.

 

**

 

Trowa swore as he slammed a hand to the console. ‘We’re locked out!’ He straightened, and his gaze fell on the captain of the ship, who wore a look of undisguised glee in the face of Trowa’s impotent fury. ‘What did they do?’ he demanded, striding toward him. He reached out and ripped the gag away from Mostyn’s mouth. ‘Tell me.’

‘What’s happening?’ Mariemaia interrupted. She clutched the arms of her hair in white-knuckled hands.

Mostyn was grinning at him through a split lip. ‘Screw you,’ he said with relish.

Trowa stared at him for a moment. Then he spun away, and slapped on his comm. ‘Chang, what’s going on?’ He waited for an answer, and got none. ‘Chang!’

‘Where is he?’ Mariemaia asked his back. There was a shrill edge to her voice now.

He grabbed his rifle from where it leant against his console, and he swung the strap over his shoulder as he made for the door. ‘I’m going to check it out,’ he told her. ‘Martinez, stay with Khushrenada.’

‘Yes, sir.’ He caught a glimpse of the woman moving into position just before he jumped onto the ladder, sliding down by the strength of his arms and hands and hitting the deck below the wheelhouse with a light bounce. It was daylight now, but so damn foggy he could barely see three feet in front of his face. He knew in his gut there were people out there in that fog, but without the instrumentation, he couldn’t see where. He had six men with the nukes and had to hope that was enough– Chang had another three with him, and with Catalonia not reporting in and Martinez on the bridge, they’d be only too easy to overwhelm.

He dropped down the ladder to Deck Two, and crossed the hall to the ladder for Deck Three. As he swung down the rails, he heard gun fire abruptly stop.

 

**

 

‘Hands up!’ Quatre said. ‘I mean it, Wufei.’

Wufei rose slowly from his kneeling beside one of his teammates, who lay flat on the deck flooring bleeding around a bullet wound to the shoulder. ‘I’d be worse than a fool to give up my gun.’

‘We’ll start with your hands where I can see them,’ Quatre repeated. Wufei obeyed that much, spreading his hands at head-height, one of them holding a Steyr in a tight grip. He’d at least moved his finger away from the trigger, but Quatre watched him closely. ‘Kathleen?’ he asked, not looking away. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. Just a graze.’ She came to his side holding all the confiscated weapons. Quatre took a Smith and Wesson to replace his nearly spent Beretta and tried not to notice how hard his hand was shaking as he sighted on Wufei’s chest again, watching for the slightest muscle movement that would indicate an oncoming attack. ‘All right yourself?’

‘Fine.’ He gestured with his free hand back to the dry lab. ‘Let’s get out of the corridor, Wufei. Inside.’

‘Hands where I can see them!’ a new voice barked. Ehrlich spun about, but when she went still just a second later, Quatre knew it was too late. He didn’t bother to turn away from Wufei, who immediately trained on him, his stance relaxing as they were joined by another of the fake Preventers.

Trowa came into his eyeline, a rifle on Ehrlich. ‘Drop that to the deck,’ he instructed her cooly. ‘Let’s keep this calm.’ The muzzle followed her as she crouched a bit to set down the armload of guns, and then she backed up a step. Quatre saw it all from the corner of his eye, still watching Wufei closely. Trowa’s head turned toward him next. ‘Put down your weapons, Quatre.’

‘No,’ Quatre said simply.

‘I will shoot you.’

‘I’m well aware of that.’ It didn’t even hurt to say– much. Something flickered in Wufei’s face, though, and Quatre seized on it. ‘There’s nothing you won’t do anymore, is there?’ he added relentlessly. ‘You’ve lied, taken hostages, threatened to deploy nuclear weapons– you’ve murdered. Why should shooting me be off-limits?’ Wufei swallowed hard, but anything he might have answered was cut off by Trowa.

‘Quiet,’ Trowa ordered Quatre. He came a step closer, his gaze flicking down to Wufei’s men. ‘Nootka, on your feet. Baker, get Kozlova out of here. I want more men on deck to cover the nukes.’

One of the men looked up from his wounded comrade. ‘What about– ‘

‘He wouldn’t be here without backup,’ Trowa snapped. ‘I want everyone but Martinez, Chang and myself on deck, do you understand me?’

‘I can see why peace was unbearable,’ Quatre interjected with false sympathy. ‘Must have been hard, not having anyone to tell you what to do, to disregard your protests–‘

‘Shut up,’ Wufei snapped at him. ‘You heard him. On deck.’

Quatre blinked rapidly as Wufei’s body blurred, his voice echoing oddly. He’d nearly dropped the gun and had to wrench it back to level. ‘You grew up with the Alliance,’ he said loudly. ‘Now you’re willing to replace them with a dictatorship?’ But they weren’t listening. They collected their weapons from Ehrlich, who stood with her hands held carefully at her sides. Quatre couldn’t even catch their eyes as they slid past him and jogged back up the corridor to the ladders.

As soon as their footsteps had dissipated, Trowa moved his rifle off Ehrlich. He looked fully at Quatre, who did not take his eyes off Wufei. ‘You shouldn’t have done this, Quatre,’ he added softly– almost regretfully. ‘I tried to keep you out of it.’

‘I’m sorry I was always such a burden to you,’ Quatre answered a little bitterly. ‘But if you don’t kill me now, I will stop you.’

‘You’re too late.’ Trowa came another step toward him. ‘It’s not our job to keep saving the world, Quatre. They don’t want to be saved. They want to be ruled. They want to be safe, they want to be spared all the gory details, all the nasty secrets. Khushrenada’s better than the Alliance or Dekim Barton, and that’s all that concerns me right now. We convinced your friend here of that.’

‘You asked the right questions,’ Ehrlich interrupted. ‘You didn’t give answers. I don’t think you’re giving them now– you’re just causing more trouble.’

‘She’s right,’ Quatre said. ‘It’s not enough to just ask questions. We’ve had enough of that. We’re not fifteen anymore, Trowa, Wufei, it’s not enough to just pick up a weapon and fight. There has to be something to fight for. A child with nuclear weapons and a lot of rage isn’t an alternative to a stable government, however flawed you think it is.’

‘Flawed?’ Wufei repeated incredulously. ‘I didn’t want this!’ Wufei cried, sweeping a hand about as if to take in the entire universe. ‘I didn’t fight for this!’

‘It doesn’t matter if it’s what we would have chosen,’ Quatre disagreed. ‘It’s what we got. It’s what billions of people without a Gundam and an arsenal chose for themselves. It’s how they put their lives together after the tanks and the guns and the bombs were all gone and they could turn their lights on at night again! Who are you to take that away from them again? It’s their peace, yes, not ours, but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we can blow it all to hell!’

Wufei tightened his grip on his gun, fury and hate making a hot glare from his dark eyes. ‘And so everything just moves on as if two wars were never fought? As if we didn’t bleed and die for them? They buried and forgot us, Quatre. They funnel us away into history and leave the door wide open for war to come again.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ Ehrlich interjected. ‘War is a choice, the same as peace. There’s nothing inevitable or natural about you bringing WMD on a science ship!’

The gun moved from Quatre’s chest to Ehrlich’s. ‘Shut up,’ Wufei snarled at her. ‘I’ve faced down greater men than you.’

‘Treize Khushrenada,’ Quatre said, seizing on the name and winning the gun back to himself. ‘That’s an interesting example. I don’t see him here. I don’t see any of his spirit in this shameful hostage hold you have on the Earth. He died trying to stop Milliardo Peacecraft from something just this evil and misguided.’

Wufei’s chest heaved, his face a fraction more flushed than before. A tremor ran the length of his arm until the muzzle of his gun shook. ‘Barely a year after he fooled Heero into attacking the Federation Doves,’ he corrected. ‘He destroyed all hope of peace one day and bought it with his death the next. So what?’

Quatre saw the twitch in Wufei’s expression a second before the proximity alarms went off. The klaxon rang over the intercoms, and the corridor went orange as the emergency lights came on. Quatre dove back toward Ehrlich as Wufei and Trowa reacted violently to the alarm. He pressed his right-hand gun on her and braced himself against the wall just as Trowa turned away and sprinted up the corridor. Quatre locked on him for a moment, but his mind wasn’t as fast as his instinct. He didn’t shoot, and a moment later he didn’t have the aim to do it. Trowa went around the corner and disappeared. They were alone with Wufei now, and he was out-manned and out-gunned.

‘Let’s try this again,’ Ehrlich told him. ‘Hands in the air.’

 

**

 

Heero’s comm buzzed. He picked it up and stuck it on the velcro patch on his shoulder, thumbed it to speaker, and returned to typing. ‘Yuy,’ he said.

_‘It’s me. What did you just do?’_

Benson, at Trowa’s office. ‘I tripped a few alarms, I think,’ Heero answered, distracted by the second screen and a sudden spurt of pop-up functions. ‘Why?’

_‘Everything shut down and restarted. I have a whole new screen. I think you’ve activated remote-access.’_

That confused him. ‘I don’t see it anywhere,’ he confessed, running a quick check of all screens and the laptop. ‘Your access to me or mine to you?’

_‘Inputting file access command.’_

Heero waited, but nothing happened. He opened files randomly, but once again was greeted by nothing but nonsense. Or was it nonsense? Another layer of disguise? Real code, hidden in computer code? He struggled to find a pattern in the endless rows of letters and symbols. Tentatively he input his own string, but nothing returned. He tried again.

 _‘Desktop,’_ Benson said suddenly. _‘You see what I see?’_

Heero pulled it up on the third of the linked screens. He stared at it, wondering what it was that Benson had seen– and finally saw it, an icon in black on the black scheme. He clicked on it.

IEO-MK-00

‘What the hell is it?’ Benson asked.

Heero opened it, sending it to screen one. A pop-up box demanded a password.

_‘Not a lot of time for code-breaking.’_

Heero ignored that, and typed, OM-QRW-95. A moment later, the box disappeared, and information began to scroll down the screen. Heero leaned forward unconsciously, his fingers tense on the keyboard as he scanned the screen.

 _‘OM-QRW?’_ Benson was saying. _‘What’s th– it worked. What is this?’_

‘A backdoor,’ Heero whispered.

 

**

 

‘There’s still time to walk away,’ Quatre said. ‘Help me get on the bridge. Stop Mariemaia from giving the command. Disarm the nukes.’

‘Not this time,’ Wufei said roughly. ‘I can’t walk away now. I waited, Quatre. I waited for it to get better. For the people to understand. But they don’t, and they never will. The path of righteousness is obedience and discipline. The people must be lead, and lead well, and then the peace will be a true one.’

Neither of them got any further. Wufei’s comm went off, causing all of them to jump. Wufei didn’t move to answer it, until Quatre nodded. With his free hand, Wufei activated it.

It was Trowa. He said, ‘Chang. It’s over. Abandon ship now.’

‘What?’ Wufei demanded.

‘There’s something out there. I have a feeling we’re about to be boarded. I’m getting Khushrenada on a STAB now. You’ve got two minutes to get on it and get her out of here.’

That broke Wufei’s concentration, and his handgun dipped as he began to argue. Ehrlich tensed next to Quatre, and began to inch toward Wufei. ‘What about the nukes?’ he was shouting.

‘I’m on that STAB,’ he responded. ‘And you’re out of time. Come with me now or I will abandon you to the Preventers.’

Understanding dawned over Wufei’s face. ‘You lied,’ he said faintly. ‘You lied.’

‘If we live, we get to try again later. If you die, you don’t get that option.’ Quatre swallowed heavily, watching the play of emotion on Wufei’s face get darker and darker. And at the end of it, Trowa said softly, ‘Suit yourself,’ and the comm went dead.

Several things happened all at once, then. Ehrlich had been watching the exchange closely, and she unwisely stepped into Wufei’s space with her rifle cocked. Wufei’s gun automatically swept toward the new threat. Quatre whipped his own gun level with his eyes and sighted. And the lights went out, plunging them all into blackness.

There were three shots and a scuffling scramble. Quatre kept his gun trained though he couldn’t see a thing, and shouted, ‘Status!’

‘Fine,’ Ehrlich called back. He heard her shuffling, as if rising from the floor. Quatre stepped forward cautiously, then went into a crouch, sliding a hand out while keeping the gun at ready.

He found Wufei’s shoulder, and followed the arm down until he had a wrist. His throat tight, he felt for a pulse. When it throbbed beneath his pointer finger, he let out a sigh that quavered. ‘What’s going on out there?’ he said aloud, keeping his bead while he searched for the wound he’d inflicted.

‘I hear shouting,’ Ehrlich reported from nearby. Quatre turned half a mind toward it, the rest of his focus on searching vital areas. If Wufei wasn’t moving, it had to be bad. ‘Preventers,’ Ehrlich added suddenly.

‘We need medical,’ he told her. ‘Go find them. Wait–‘ He reached for his collar, and tugged off the chain and badge he wore beneath the wetsuit. ‘Show them this,’ he added, and slid it across the floor toward where he’d heard her. She caught it, and left without wasting any further words.

Wufei drew a shuddering breath. He moved, just a little. ‘Hold on,’ Quatre murmured to him, feeling arms and then legs. ‘You’re going to be all right if you just hold on.’ Frustrated that he couldn’t find a wound, he turned back to Wufei’s torso, reaching under shoulders and pawing what he could reach of Wufei’s back.

The next breath he heard had too much wet in it. Suddenly understanding, Quatre touched Wufei’s neck, and found the spill of blood. He stuck the gun back between his feet, and applied careful pressure to the gushing bullet wound he or Ehrlich had inflicted on his friend, just to the side of the trachea. ‘Just a little longer,’ he said urgently. ‘You are not allowed to die for this. Do you understand me? You’re not dying here.’

Wufei’s arm shifted, and then his hand clamped weakly over Quatre’s. Quatre didn’t know if it was agreement or denial, and he didn’t make any guesses. He sat there in the dark waiting for help to come and feeling his friend’s life slip through his fingers, and he didn’t think about anything beyond listening for that next watery breath.

It could have been a minute or a year. Strong torch beams cut into the room, and voices were snapping orders in all directions. Quatre didn’t hear any of it until hands in plastic gloves joined his on Wufei’s neck, and he looked up to see Sally Po in a black ops suit and dark wool cap kneeling on the other side of Wufei’s body.

‘I’ve got him,’ she told Quatre. ‘I need airway control,’ she said, and Quatre was pushed aside by two Preventers who were bringing medical equipment with them. ‘Give me suction and get the tube ready,’ Po continued, taking a metal instrument from the kit laid next to her.

‘Quatre,’ someone called, and he looked away long enough to see Ehrlich standing next to him. ‘You need medical, too,’ she reminded him brusquely. When he didn’t immediately respond, she took his arm, but she was as gentle with him as she’d been the day he’d had a seizure. ‘They’re waiting for you,’ she added softly, and kept between him and Wufei as she led him away from the lab.

They didn’t make it any further than the corner, though. Preventers were everywhere, their high-beam torches illuminating the darkness as they ran past with rifles and handguns. Quatre remembered suddenly that he’d left his behind, but it seemed that the fighting was over, at least for him.

A Preventer his size broke from a trio at the end of the corridor and jogged to them, removing night goggles as he did so. Quatre caught a glimpse of a braid swinging, and abruptly relaxed. If Duo was on board, then it was under control.

It was Duo, and Duo didn’t waste time with greetings before grabbing Quatre into a hard embrace. Quatre laughed just a little as he returned it, and he missed the warmth of his friend’s arms when they stepped apart a moment later. He was shaking uncontrollably now.

‘We caught Khushrenada,’ Duo told him immediately. ‘They tried to make a getaway, but we caught the whole damn boatload. We got Trowa, too. We’re holding him on the bridge.’ He looked at Ehrlich, and added, ‘We’ll get your crew out as soon as we’ve got all areas secured.’

She nodded. ‘They’ll appreciate that, sir.’

Duo’s bright eyes turned back to him. ‘They told me Wufei is down.’

‘I shot him,’ Quatre said, and winced at how dull his own voice sounded. ‘I don’t know– I don’t know how he is.’

He didn’t have to wait for an answer to that, because Po appeared at their side with her medics behind her, carrying Wufei on a gurney, and a third woman carefully administering oxygen via a bag. Quatre moved toward them, but Duo held him back as Po reported, ‘He’s stable. He needs immediate surgery to repair the trauma, but it looks worse than it is. We have a clear exit wound and no major arterial damage. I doubt you were aiming for the neck, Quatre, but as bullet wounds go, it’s minimal.’ She frowned at him, then took Duo’s torch from him and aimed it at Quatre. Specifically, at his side, and his electrical tape pressure bandage. ‘You’re coming with me,’ she finished. ‘Maxwell, I’m taking one of the swift boats back to the Longhorn.’

‘Understood.’ Duo’s comm beeped impatiently, and he thumbed it on. ‘Get me a pilot for Swift Boat One,’ he said into it. He ignored whatever message was waiting for him, and gripped Quatre’s shoulder. ‘Good job,’ he said seriously. ‘We did what we came to do and we got all the bad guys. We should always be this lucky.’

Quatre managed a small smile. ‘All that said, I think I’ll sit the next one out.’ He remembered another problem, and turned to Ehrlich. ‘Dorothy,’ he said. ‘That is– the woman in the sub launch. She’ll need medical too.’

‘I’ve got a second team on board,’ Po assured him. ‘They’ll get to her.’ She firmly removed Duo’s hand and replaced it with her own. ‘But you’re coming with me right now.’

It was, Quatre decided, quite over. ‘No argument here,’ he sighed, and smiled at Ehrlich before he followed Sally topside.

 

**

 

Quatre woke abruptly when his sleeping mind registered that his arm had gone numb. He struggled to free it, blind and not truly alert, and heard a clatter nearby. He forced his eyes open to see that he’d flailed and knocked a water glass from a small table beside his bed. His fingers began to tingle.

Someone else was in the room with him. They rose to fetch the glass– at least it was empty, Quatre thought– but then they filled it from a pitcher on the tray parked above Quatre’s knees. Quatre moved to rub his eyes free of crust and sleep, and felt the pull of an IV in his hand and an oximetre over his pointer finger. It was painfully familiar. With the now unpleasantly pins-and-needles arm, he awkwardly rubbed his face until he could see who was offering him the glass.

Heero.

The small part of him that was awake was startled, but the rest of him, still contentedly asleep, was not in the least surprised. That part of him offered a little smile in return for the water that Heero held to his lips.

‘You must really like hospitals,’ Heero said, watching him sip from the straw. ‘How many times does that make this month?’

‘Har har,’ Quatre retorted, nudging the straw aside as he finished with it. ‘At least I admit when I need one.’

That earned him a tiny smile. Heero set the glass back where it had been, presumably, before Quatre knocked it off the table, and sat on the edge of Quatre’s bed. They weren’t in a private room this time, but instead were sheltered by a curtain drawn about the three open sides of his bed and monitors. Overhead lights were off.

‘Casualties?’ Quatre asked suddenly.

‘Seven,’ Heero replied. ‘Three of ours. One being you.’

‘Dead?’

‘Two.’ Heero looked at him sideways. ‘Catalonia made it though.’

So the blow to the head hadn’t crushed her skull. It had been three years since he’d killed someone, and he was very glad not to have done so again. He swallowed around the dry cottony taste in his throat. ‘Wufei?’ he asked.

‘He’ll recover. He’s in an isolation ward.’

That, he was grateful for. ‘He threatened one of the crew,’ he explained. His never-ending supply of guilt made a rushing appearance in his gut, not far from the niggling ache of his stab wound, and to his intense embarrassment he found tears forming hot and liquid in his eyes. ‘I didn’t have to shoot him,’ he admitted hoarsely, looking away from Heero’s patient gaze. ‘There were other options. But I shot him anyway.’ One tear escaped down his cheek in a salty trail, and once it was free several others followed. He drew the line at sniffling, but he couldn’t make the tears stop. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered vaguely. ‘It must be the drugs. I wish I hadn’t shot him. I thought I’d killed him and he’s my friend...’

There was silence in answer. Quatre forced himself to shut up by biting his tongue. Then with a rustle and a shift of the mattress, Heero reached for something. Quatre looked up when a damp cloth began to rove over his face, cleaning away the evidence of a very long day and his pathetic lack of self-control.

‘You did good work in there,’ Heero said after a long pause, his eyes on his work, and not on Quatre’s own gaze. ‘You acted to protect your people. Wufei knew you would do that, when he chose to put himself on the other side of the conflict.’ He puffed out a breath in something that sort of resembled a sigh. ‘Maybe it wasn’t the best option, but it was what you had to do.’

They sat quietly for a while after that, Quatre allowing Heero to wash his arms and hands, watching the cloth move carefully about the tape strapping the IV to his hand. When he thought he could ask without crying, he drew a deep breath for help, and said, ‘Trowa.’

Heero grimaced. ‘He left his transmitter operational from his office in Brussels, but it was only accessible from his condominium. I probably won’t ever know if it was a backdoor for us, or for himself. He’s claimed that he was acting as a double agent the entire time. Une and Duo have had him in interrogation for nearly fourteen hours.’

Quatre wished he didn’t feel glad. ‘Give him one thing,’ he muttered, closing his eyes and letting his head drop back onto his pillow. ‘He’s smart.’

‘He’ll walk away.’

‘He always does.’ Quatre sobered abruptly. ‘But Wufei won’t.’

‘No. He’s already confessed.’

Quatre sighed. ‘I feel sorry for him. Isn’t that awful? I feel sorry for him, because I really thought he understood.’ He slitted his eyes to look at Heero, and saw this time that there were eyes waiting for him. ‘Whatever you did, to talk him down, during the Eve War,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do that. I should have tried harder.’

‘I must not have done too well either,’ Heero excused him. ‘What I said– it didn’t make that much difference in the end, did it?’ He tossed the cloth into the sink along the wall, and rested his hands over the holes in the knees of his jeans. ‘We weren’t ever going to save him from himself.’

Exhaustion was kicking in, and his world was getting fuzzy on the edges. ‘Duo must have been glad to see you,’ he murmured.

‘I might have been glad to see him too,’ Heero allowed. ‘And you.’ He hesitated, and Quatre kept himself awake long enough to hear what came next. ‘I felt you,’ the other man explained, soft and a little uncomfortable. ‘Before I even saw the news. I had a dream about you. About us, really. In the ocean. Under it. There were– dolphins.’

Quatre found himself smiling muzzily. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘There were.’ On an impulse, not even sure Heero meant to stay now that the crisis was over, he asked, ‘Do you want to meet them?’

‘The dolphins?’ He’d startled Heero, something he didn’t often manage to do. ‘They’re real?’

‘Very.’ He reached for Heero’s hand, could only reach as far as his elbow, and squeezed that instead. ‘Stick around, and I’ll introduce you.’

‘All right,’ Heero agreed quietly. ‘I’d like that.’ He waited for Quatre to remove his hand, and stood. ‘Good night.’

‘Good night.’ He watched Heero pick up and don a jean jacket, then lift a corner of the curtain to go. ‘Wait,’ he demanded suddenly, just barely awake enough to ask. ‘Can you swim?’

Heero glanced back at him. ‘Of course,’ he said.

Quatre fell asleep grinning about that.


	20. Twenty

Sally looked down at Quatre gravely. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she asked.

Quatre nodded his reply. The ‘cell’ Trowa had been confined to since his capture was hardly destitute; he had a cot with extra blankets, a table with two chairs, even a large window. But it was unmistakably confinement. The room was white and antiseptic in design, functional but maddeningly unyielding, and the two-way mirror that Quatre stood before made no pretense at being anything but prison-like. Trowa, jumpsuited in orange and looking unkempt after several days of unrelenting questioning, stood at the window staring out moodily.

‘We’ll be right outside,’ Heero said softly at his elbow. Quatre smiled at his friend, and at Duo who stood behind him. Then Sally entered the key at the door, and the latch slipped for him. Quatre pushed gently at the cool metal, and it opened soundlessly.

Trowa turned from contemplating the view as Quatre entered. His eyes skipped over Quatre’s body, once again wrapped concealingly in a thick jumper and soft canvas trousers. Then Trowa gestured with mocking gallantry at the table, as if he were the host and Quatre the guest.

‘I can send the butler for tea,’ the taller man said, something scathing working in the undertones of his low voice. ‘Perhaps some scones and clotted cream? Truffles and mousse?’

‘I served you soup made from field rations the first day we met,’ Quatre replied mildly, hearing the door close behind him. ‘And I wasn’t the one who couldn’t finish it.’

A wary smile, so minute he almost missed it, floated over Trowa’s mouth. ‘Ever-gracious. Even when it’s only to yourself.’

Quatre decided against waiting for Trowa to join him, and sat hard in one of the chairs at the table, sticking his cushion behind him so he could sit in some semblance of comfort. Though it was getting easier to move about, the short walk from the car to the lower levels of Preventers HQ had left him with a fine trembling in his hands and a hollow feeling in his stomach. But playing the weakling, even for real, wouldn’t win him anything with Trowa, and so he didn’t ask for the water he saw in the pitcher on the counter along the opposite wall. He sat, caught his breath, waiting for equilibrium, or for Trowa to make the first move.

It wasn’t one he’d expected, but then, he’d never known Trowa very well. Trowa suddenly drew out one of the chairs, across the table from Quatre, and sat in a slightly exaggerated slump, kicking out his long legs between the rungs below. His flat agate gaze was one shade off insolent, his right eye only half visible beneath the shaggy fall of lank hair. ‘I’ve been wondering if you play anymore,’ he said abruptly.

The circuitous route. Or maybe his answer really would mean something, in Trowa-speak. Quatre replied, ‘Not really. Not since the war, I guess.’

‘That’s too bad. You were good.’

He’d been classically trained in violin and piano. He’d liked piano more, never comfortable giving himself over to an instrument so emotionally demanding as the violin. ‘You still play?’ he asked Trowa, willing to go along.

‘Sometimes.’

The thought had no sooner occurred to him than it was out of his mouth, without any consideration for feasability. ‘I could have your flute shipped here,’ he said, and winced at his own boldness.

Trowa either didn’t pick up on it, or ignored it. ‘It’s not my flute,’ he said. ‘I only used it because it was what you had.’

Quatre exhaled, and wished his legs weren’t too rubbery to go and get the water. ‘It was yours the moment you touched it,’ he said honestly. It wasn’t as if he’d ever played it. And it had given him pleasure to keep the flute in his home, since he couldn’t keep Trowa.

Trowa’s posture slipped into aggression, and he leaned across the table on one elbow, his orange suit its own connotative bully. ‘You don’t have to always give me things, Quatre.’

Quatre could only blink at him. ‘Things were all you ever let me give you,’ he answered at last.

Trowa’s face changed, but didn’t, and Quatre couldn’t read it anyway. He flinched a little in surprise when Trowa stood abruptly, his chair skidding loudly on the tiled floor. Trowa strode to the counter and splashed water from the pitcher into a glass, then returned to the table and thrust the glass at Quatre. He took it carefully, and sipped. Trowa didn’t wait for his thanks, returning the window and glaring at it darkly.

‘I suppose you heard about my deal with Une,’ he said.

‘Immunity for your testimony.’

‘Yes.’ Trowa turned just enough that he could include Quatre in his gaze without seeming to. ‘So where’s the speech on morality? On the importance of solidarity? Not screwing over a team-mate?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Quatre said wearily, and put the glass down when he saw his hand shaking. ‘If you hadn’t gotten that deal I would have had lawyers in here getting it for you. I’ve spent two days convincing Wufei to ask for the same.’ He thought Trowa was surprised, but if he was, he hid it quickly. ‘Besides which, you’ve demonstrated that ESA prisons are comically easy to break into. Une’s not going to put a Gundam pilot in one and cross her fingers.’

Trowa’s full lips turned down in a little scowl, and his eyes went back to the window. ‘Did you know I’m supposed to report my every movement to them for the rest of my life? If I take a piss I have to record it. I can’t walk to the mail box without alerting the Senate.’

‘Am I here to listen to you feel sorry for yourself?’ Quatre asked. ‘You made your damn bed.’

Silence greeted that. Just when Quatre had decided Trowa meant to ignore it, he said, ‘It should have had you in it.’

That hurt. It hurt hard, and deep, and for a minute he couldn’t breathe around it. He reached for the water, clamping his fingers around it and raising it to his mouth. It spilled a bit when he swallowed, and he had to wipe his chin. He stared at his wet fingers, and said, ‘That was always your choice. I waited five years for you to make it.’ A breathless little laugh started somewhere in his gut and didn’t make it past his throat. ‘I should kick the crap out of you for that,’ he muttered. ‘I spent five years hoping one day I’d be more than a convenient port of call. And telling myself the whole time to move on. Thinking I could live on the crumbs you gave me, like any person could starve and still be happy.’ He clenched his hands into fists, and then forced them flat and open on his thighs. ‘You don’t have the right to say that to me. Not anymore.’

‘It’s not like it’s just my fault,’ Trowa shot back, crossing his arms over his chest belligerently. ‘I asked you to come to L3 with me.’

‘To live at the circus! And do what, Trowa? You didn’t even stay there. We both had ideas. Ambitions. Yours aren’t any more or less important than mine.’

‘Oh, here we go,’ Trowa retorted nastily. He came back to the table, dropping into his chair and leaning forward again. ‘You were always the responsible one, weren’t you. You had the ten-year plan and the contacts and you knew the game and you played by the rules. You were so busy being the perfect son you didn’t even notice them sucking away your soul.’ He stared down Quatre’s instinctive protest. ‘You know what?’ he added. He dropped his chin to his hand. ‘You gave some pretty speeches on the IEO. How long has it been since you believed in something like that? Since you felt that passionate, Quatre? Since you felt that alive? You really want to go back to a life of writing thank-you notes for hotel staff like you’re somebody’s grandma?’

He had to look away. He’d known it would be like this, that Trowa would be angry and would go on the attack. He’d thought he could handle it, that facing the man he loved on the ship the week before had deadened him to the worst. But he was always wrong about Trowa, wasn’t he?

‘The thing I wonder about,’ he said at last, ‘is the backdoor you left. The bug I found on the IEO wasn’t there to steal information, was it. It was there to establish a link between your computers and ours. It was clever. But you had to know we’d find it. You had to anticipate that someone would find it in time and use it to bring you down.’

He could feel Trowa’s eyes on his face. Searching him, feeling him out. He deliberately kept his eyes turned away, letting the observers on the other side of the window be the judge of Trowa’s minute expressions.

A beat later, Trowa leant back. ‘I didn’t anticipate Heero coming back,’ he said conversationally. ‘That was a neat trick. Impeccable timing. The Preventers have some good men on their teams, but the real hackers can earn three times as much working against the system. Working for people like me. So I guess the answer is– no. I didn’t think you’d find it in time. I didn’t think you’d ever find the bug to begin with.’

‘Still. You took a risk. That’s not like you.’

‘Is it not?’ Quatre glanced inadvertently, and found Trowa still gazing at him. ‘What do you want me to say, Quat?’ Trowa asked him. His tone was oddly patient suddenly. ‘That I didn’t really believe in Mariemaia Khushrenada? That I left a trail of breadcrumbs hoping someone would put it together? That I deliberately recruited wildcards like Catalonia who would make irrevocable mistakes? That I’d made it my personal mission to keep an eye on the dissidents, as far back as the Barton Rebellion in 196?’

Quatre smoothed his fingers down the sides of the glass. ‘Yes,’ he answered truthfully. ‘I’d be very glad to hear you say that.’

‘It’s a good story,’ Trowa agreed softly. ‘It’ll play well with a jury, too. Khushrenada will be lucky to see sunlight again. Wufei will hang for them. You’ll have your scapegoats and your convictions, and in a year, no-one will remember we even threatened to shatter their peace.’ He paused. ‘I hear President Brussels has announced that he’s running for a second term.’

‘Yes.’ Quatre drank to wet his throat. ‘Just yesterday.’

‘I didn’t believe in her,’ Trowa said. ‘I never thought it would work. But maybe it ought to have. Maybe then people would understand. Maybe then they’d have to wake up a little, and take their heads out of the god-damn sand and see what we did for them.’

‘Maybe we should have just died during the wars,’ Quatre said quietly. ‘But we didn’t. I know it’s hard. There’s not a single one of us who doesn’t struggle with the fact that we lived.’

‘Really, Quatre?’ Trowa demanded. ‘Even you?’

His mouth stayed open, but no words emerged. His eyes were suddenly stinging. Through the blur he saw something change on Trowa’s face, but he would never be sure if it really was regret. Someone knocked on the mirror.

Trowa stared down at the table. ‘They want you back outside,’ he said neutrally.

He was out of water. He set the glass aside and pressed his damp palms to the thighs of his trousers. ‘It isn’t that I don’t understand why you did it. I just don’t understand how you could. How you could want other people to grow up like you did. Like we all did. Trapped, and– angry.’

The knock came again, hard and staccato this time. Trowa looked automatically at the mirror, but Quatre did not. He said, ‘Answer me.’

Trowa’s eyes flicked back to him. ‘You have no idea who I am, Quatre.’

This time it was the door, and it swung open on Sally. Quatre didn’t wait for her to say anything. He stood and brushed past her. Duo made to stop him as he walked into the corridor, but he hesitated long enough for Quatre to slip away. No-one called after him as he fled.

 

**

 

Heero found him sitting on a bench in the back courtyard of HQ. He sat perhaps a foot away from Quatre, and offered a paper cup. Quatre took it automatically, and found that it was tea, still steaming gently.

He said, ‘You must think I’m a real moron.’

Heero’s shoulders rose and fell. ‘I don’t pretend to understand all of it,’ he replied after a moment. He looked where Quatre was looking, at the arrangement of olive trees and flowering bushes that formed a low hedge maze in the courtyard.

‘I know he’s playing me.’

Heero glanced sideways at him. ‘Maybe that’s the only way he knows to be with people.’

‘So that makes it okay?’ Quatre forced himself to sip from the tea, and was surprised to find it was prepared exactly as he liked it. Maybe Heero had asked someone; it would be a strange thing to remember after five years of absence.

Heero rubbed his hands on his trousers. ‘Weren’t you playing him?’

That made him look. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked slowly.

Heero met his look. ‘I don’t think you know you’re doing it. But you do. You got him to say what you thought you were going to hear.’

That stung. ‘I didn’t.’

‘You always lead the conversation in the only way you can stand to go.’ Heero shrugged awkwardly again. ‘It’s not a bad thing,’ he added. ‘It’s just how you are.’

There was a limit to how many unflattering things a person could hear about himself in one day. Quatre felt too raw even to cry about it. He said, ‘It sounds like a bad thing.’

Heero inhaled sharply and looked away. ‘You’re a really brave person,’ he murmured. ‘You can stand a lot more than most people.’ He rubbed his legs again. ‘I never really understood why you were together,’ he said. ‘You and Trowa.’

‘I’m starting to get the feeling that we weren’t,’ Quatre admitted bitterly. ‘If everyone felt that way, why didn’t anyone ever say anything?’

Heero flushed a little. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’

Quatre sighed, and rested the cup between his knees. ‘No, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to jump all over you.’ He found a smile, and reached for Heero’s forearm, gripping it tightly for a moment. ‘I don’t want you to run away because I’m being horrid.’

‘You’re never horrid,’ Heero said. He didn’t move his arm the way he would have done when they were younger, and Quatre left his hand there a little longer, grateful for the connection. Heero’s presence was calming and gentle. He thought of asking where Heero had been for so long, what he had seen and done; but even as he thought it he realised he didn’t need to. Heero would tell them when he was ready, or maybe he never would, but his experience had obviously changed him. For the better.

‘Yes,’ Heero said.

Quatre glanced at him, startled. Heero smiled a little, just a twitch of his mouth really. But then he sobered, his eyes darkening and his thick eyebrows coming together in a frown. He asked, ‘Do you really feel that way? That we should have died in the war?’

He removed his hand quickly. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do.’ Heero waited for him to look back, but Quatre stubbornly stared at the hedge maze. ‘You regret it? That you lived?’

‘I don’t regret it,’ he answered grudgingly. ‘I just– ‘ He finished the tea, and crumpled the paper cup between his hands. ‘Sometimes I– struggle– to understand why I lived, when so many others didn’t.’

‘You had the training. And the will.’

‘I really thought I would die,’ he confessed. ‘I thought– I thought it would be fitting. That it would be just. After the things I’d done, after bringing Zero into the world. After my father died. I don’t know. I’ve tried to live a good life since then. To do the right things, the good things. But there are days when that doesn’t seem to be enough.’

Heero’s dark head shifted. He said, ‘I think maybe that’s all there is. There’s no cosmic scale to balance. Just– trying.’

‘Heero?’ When their eyes met, Quatre finished, ‘Don’t leave. Please. I mean– if you feel like you have to go– I’ll understand. But not just yet, all right?’

Heero’s face was reddening again. ‘I hadn’t really planned...’

‘You could stay with us. Duo and I.’ He hesitated. ‘It would mean a lot to him. To me.’

Heero looked off into the maze again. At last, he nodded his assent. ‘All right,’ he said, only a little clumsily. ‘I would like that.’

 

**

 

Quatre watched the shuttle taxi to the launch runway. The window they stood behind blocked the intense wind and noise of the space port, adding a buffer between the inevitable and their last minutes together. Wufei stood silently beside him, immaculately dressed and groomed, his face thin and remote. The thick bandage that he wore about his neck was mute testimony to his recovery, but he stood as straight as ever, the thick strap of his duffle digging into the shoulder of his simple cotton button-down.

Duo caught Quatre’s eyes, and jerked his chin in the direction of the sitting area behind them. Quatre nodded his thanks, and Duo made a discreet turnabout, walking out of earshot to give them some privacy.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Quatre asked one more time.

Wufei released a deep breath. ‘I’m sure.’

‘It’s not like you can just turn around and come home. It’ll be at least twenty-one months if you change your mind, Wufei.’

‘I’ve made my decision.’ Wufei shifted the lay of the strap of his bag, pulling it across this chest. ‘We both know it’s for the best. At least I can be of some use on Mars.’

When Une had suggested sending Wufei to the Mars Terraforming Project to serve out his sentence, Quatre had protested loud and long. But Wufei was not the only former soldier of questionable reputation who had chosen an exile to a backwater science colony. Maybe Wufei really would be happier among people like Zechs Merquise and Lucretia Noin, themselves trying to carve out a new life far away from the wreckage of the old. And certainly the President had been happy to send yet another failed rebel to a colony so desolate the chances of Wufei ever reappearing to cause trouble were slim indeed. But knowing the whys didn’t particularly make Quatre feel better.

‘What’s going to happen to Khushrenada?’ Wufei asked after a minute of silence.

‘There will be a trial. After that, I really don’t know.’ There was a possibility that as long as she lived, she would be a focal point for rebellion. Quatre knew it wouldn’t matter if they sent her to Pluto; there would always be someone to take her place, someone with a grudge, someone charismatic enough, someone to lead so that others could follow.

Wufei sent a sidelong glance toward Quatre; then he turned his head to look fully at the other man. He said, ‘I’m in your debt.’

‘No,’ Quatre answered.

‘No?’

‘There’s no debt.’ He wasn’t quite sure how to explain, and settled carefully on adding, ‘I’m still your friend.’

Something bitter tugged at Wufei’s thin mouth. ‘Then I’m in your debt for that, as well.’

Quatre looked away this time. He heard Wufei exhale abruptly, and then say, ‘I apologise.’

Oh, they were both masters of this dance. Wufei wasn’t sorry and they both knew it; and Wufei was no longer his friend, and they both knew that, too. Quatre replied listlessly, ‘You don’t have to.’

‘Yes. I do.’

Quatre’s throat felt tight. He swallowed, but it remained dry. He said, ‘I had this idea that– I don’t know, that we shouldn’t part angry. Stupid, huh.’

‘I’m not angry.’

‘Maybe you should be.’

‘That wouldn’t achieve anything, would it?’

He might have fought harder for himself. He was twenty years old, and his life was as good as over. It made Quatre angry. It made him feel sick that he couldn’t do anything about it.

Quatre said, ‘Do you... do you want me to go?’ Wufei’s eyes flickered. He tried not to be hurt when Wufei nodded immediately, and concentrated on steeling himself for the end. ‘All right,’ he mumbled. ‘Well– good-bye.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Wufei sighed. ‘That was rude.’

‘You’re entitled,’ Quatre excused him.

‘No-one is.’

He didn’t want to argue honour. Wufei wanted him gone, and maybe he should just accept that and leave. He watched Wufei glanced behind them to the others for a moment, then turn back to the window.

‘Good-bye,’ he said again, and walked away.

Duo and Heero stood together across the terminal corridor by the kiosk selling coffee. Heero immediately handed him a hot cup of tea– he was always thoughtful these days. Quatre smiled his mute appreciation as he faced Wufei’s solitary stance at the window again. Between the three of them and the man who had once been one of them, two Preventer guards drifted closer to the prisoner, their presence unobtrusive but unmistakable.

Duo’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and checked the number; he raised grave eyes to Quatre, who stiffened. Duo flipped the mobile open and pressed it to his ear.

‘Agent Lightning,’ he said. There was a long silence as he listened, but Quatre saw the moment he heard the bad news. Duo lost all his colour. He took the mobile from his ear, but didn’t close it.

‘What’s wrong?’ Heero asked, his eyes sharp on Duo’s face.

‘Trowa’s gone,’ Duo said.

‘Gone?’ Quatre repeated dumbly.

‘His room is empty. There’s no sign of forced entry or escape. He’s just gone.’ Suddenly Duo flushed. ‘I can’t believe him! I’m going to shoot him myself when I catch his skinny ass– ‘ There was more, but Duo was already running down the terminal.

The desk called Wufei to board. Torn, Quatre stared after Duo, then at Wufei, walking toward the ramp. Heero recaptured his attention with a little touch on his arm, and said, ‘I’ll go with Duo. It will be all right.’ He waited only long enough for Quatre to acknowledge him, and then he took off as well. Feeling rather useless, Quatre turned back to find Wufei pausing to hand over his ticket to a steward.

He didn’t look back before disappearing into the tunnel.

Wufei was as good as gone, and if Trowa really had escaped somehow, he would be deep in hiding already. For the first time since that frantic morning on the IEO three weeks earlier, Quatre felt like– it was over.

He stayed long enough to watch Wufei’s shuttle launch, and then he let the two Preventer escorts drive him home.


	21. Epilogue

Badra slipped in to his outpatient room while Iraia was fluffing a mountain of pillows for the sofa, leaving Quatre to wonder if he would actually fit when they were all ready. He did, but just barely, and tried to balance himself with a foot on the floor without alerting his sisters.

‘So when are you officially discharged from hospital?’ she asked him.

‘They’re checking the sutures tomorrow, and if it all looks good, I walk out a free man,’ he reported wryly. She grinned widely at him. Badra was one of the eldest, nearly fifteen years older than himself, and he hadn’t met her until he’d been legally named the CEO of WEI after their father’s death in the middle of the war. She’d had a dry, teasing sense of humour, inclined toward practical jokes. She had reminded him then of Duo, and he’d been able to respond to her jokes with a few he’d learned from the unrepentantly dirty-mouthed L2 pilot. They had been fast allies by the end of their first meeting. He had needed her, because the majority of his sisters, especially those long-established in the family business, had seen him as an intruder– the only boy, favoured even after he’d tried to throw it all away. Some of them had even resigned in protest, and he hadn’t heard from them since.

Now Badra dropped a wrapped package in his lap, and took one of the chairs that Iraia had set up facing the couch. ‘It’s carob candy,’ she explained. ‘If I’d known it was impossible to find real sweets in this hospital, I would have picked something up along the way.’

‘I don’t mind.’ He picked at the edge of the wrapping without really opening it. ‘Thank you for coming. I know it’s a long trip.’

‘I am resigned to the fact that you can’t come to me,’ Badra said, with surprising sensitivity. ‘Some day when you’re ready, you can come back to L4.’ Iraia spoilt the moment by trying to drape an afghan over his legs, and Badra laughed while he glared at their sister.

‘Let me fuss,’ Iraia scolded, unruffled. ‘I’ve patched up your poor battered body myself, and I’m well aware that you’re no super man. Only an idiot would think he has to put up a good front after what you just went through.’

Just to prove that she was right, his eyes stung for a moment, and he had to look away while his vision blurred. He was painfully aware of Badra and Iraia lapsing into silence, sensing something had changed. Quatre fought it down, telling himself he could fall apart in private, and breathed through his nose until it passed.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

Iraia captured his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You should see me during my monthly–‘

Quatre flushed. ‘Iraia,’ he groaned. Badra erupted into a giggle at his embarrassment. ‘All right,’ she said, in the tone that signaled ‘meeting open; business only.’ ‘Why don’t you tell me why I’m here, little brother?’

‘It’s– well, in a way, this is all a part of it,’ he said, gesturing half-heartedly at the hospital ward. ‘I wanted... I want to– ‘ Iraia squeezed his hand encouragingly. ‘I want to cut back my hours,’ he blurted.

Badra blinked. ‘Cut back your hours?’

‘I feel like I’m working all the time,’ he said lamely. ‘And at first I think it was necessary. There was so much that I had to learn about WEI, and everyone had to learn about me, too. About– whether I could handle it, what kind of manager I would be.’

‘And you’ve been a very good one,’ Badra assured him, but her expression was thoughtful. She was going to hear him out, Quatre realised, and a big part of him relaxed. Iraia sensed it, and squeezed his hand again.

‘I want to bring you on as co-chair,’ he said bluntly. ‘You practically are anyway. Maybe I wouldn’t have suggested it even last year, but I think now it would be a good move. The trustees know me now and they won’t take it as a sign that I can’t handle it and I need to be pushed aside– because I don’t want that.’ He searched for the words. ‘I think I am good at it,’ he admitted finally. ‘At helping to run WEI and directing policy and– and, all of it. But I’ve always felt a little trapped in it, too. I have other obligations, even if Father didn’t understand...’

Badra only nodded. Quatre acknowledged her acceptance, and didn’t try to finish that sentence. ‘I’ll turn twenty-one in July. It sort of brought home that I never really– I mean, I spent my teenage years in business academy and fighting a war,’ he said. ‘And then I went straight into the company.’

‘I don’t think anyone would be really distressed if you took more holiday time,’ Badra answered cautiously.

‘This is about more than that,’ he told her softly. ‘I’m not even sure I can explain. I know everyone will be furious that I ran off again to the IEO. I know they’ll cover up my involvement as much as they can, but they can’t cover up my temporary employment as a Preventer. It was a stupid thing to do. But it was also something that I had to do. It’s– about obligations. There is a part of my life that will always belong to the war and who I was then. Who I am. And it’s my responsibility to do those things. I can’t choose to sit on the sidelines when someone threatens the peace, because I already made that choice when I was fourteen years old and I agreed to pilot a Gundam.’

She nodded once, but her concentration was turned inward, as she thought about his stumbling explanation. Iraia, to his surprise, looked much the same. He could feel slight tension in her fingers on his, see a strange reserve in her.

‘So I’d like you to come on as co-chair,’ Quatre told Badra at last. ‘Because I owe it to WEI to leave them with good leadership. But I owe it to everyone else to be ready if someone shows up with nuclear warheads again.’

She looked up at him squarely. ‘Is that why?’ she asked directly. ‘Is there no other reason, Quatre?’

She’d caught him. He tried to let her see his apology in his eyes, but somehow it didn’t show at all in his voice. ‘I owe it to myself to be able to breathe, once in a while,’ he said, and steeled himself against the selfishness of that.

But to his shock Badra let out a huge breath, slumping back in her chair. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am you said that,’ she muttered. Then she left her chair, perching beside him on the sofa, and gave him a gentle embrace. Stunned, he couldn’t even return it. Her eyes, blue like everyone in their family, were bright when she pulled back. ‘Little brother,’ she said seriously, ‘if I had thought you were doing this out of obligation to every bloody person in the universe except yourself, I never would have agreed to it.’

Iraia laughed at that, and laughed harder at his expression. Badra began to grin as well, and soon Quatre was frowning at both of them. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, a little sullen in the face of their obvious amusement.

‘I know you don’t,’ Iraia returned, rather kindly. ‘Have Duo explain it to you sometime.’ She ruffled the hair at the back of his head. She kissed him spontaneously, and he felt another dull blush creeping over his cheeks. They laughed at him again, but somehow, everything seemed to be all right. Badra opened his carob candy, and made him choose from the box while they began a new round of fussing over him. Quatre lay back obediently on his mound of pillows, and decided that no about of psychic ability would ever help him understand women.

 

**

 

Duo handed him a tall glass of squash, and eased into one of the beach chairs beside him. ‘I don’t know if I can describe how glad I am to be home right now.’

Quatre smiled as he sipped the tangy orange drink. Duo always made it strong. ‘I know what you mean,’ he answered, watching pink trace its way across the blue sky as the sun set. ‘There’s just something restful about being home.’

‘I take it that means you’re not going to finish the tour with the IEO?’

‘I’m not sure yet. I want to meet back up with them someday– I want to see it end. Smoothly,’ he added wryly. ‘Can you believe it only launched two months ago? It feels like forever.’

Duo drained half his iced tea, and set it on the table between their chairs. ‘I think Heero likes it here too,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’m glad.’

Yes, Quatre thought Heero liked their home as well. The townhouse itself was nothing special, just a place to live that had a little of themselves stamped on it; it was the mountains visible nearby, the clean smell of the air, the creek just below the hill. The quiet, still strangely unfamiliar sounds of birds and small animals that filled the day with chatter the colonies couldn’t match.

Heero stood framed by the timbers of the porch, gazing out at all of it, and for maybe the first time in all the time Quatre had known him, he could identify something happy in the set of Heero’s shoulders. Something at peace. It filled his heart to see it there.

Duo said, ‘You realise you’re going to have to make the first move.’

Quatre blinked at his friend, startled. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said belatedly. ‘First move in what?’

Duo’s little smirk became a genuine grin. ‘For a couple of smart, intense guys, you two are sure oblivious to the subtle stuff.’

‘What– Heero?’ Quatre looked between Duo and the young man Duo was pointedly staring at. ‘Heero?’

‘I think I’ll leave you to ponder the mysteries of the universe,’ was Duo’s smug reply, and his friend stood, striding back inside with the air of a man well pleased with himself.

Quatre watched him go, and turned back to contemplating Heero. Not long later, he decided that some things were probably best left unexamined. But he found himself rising, and bringing the light quilt that had been covering his own legs. He paused with it, then carefully draped it over Heero’s shoulders. Heero’s head whipped about to look at him.

‘Chilly,’ Quatre said. He thought suddenly about that hint of Asian heritage in Heero’s face, in the shape of his cheeks and the colour of his skin, so at odds with the deep blue of his eyes, one of those little genetic peculiarities that always spoke of Space.

Heero nodded, and caught the edge of the blanket as it slipped down his chest. ‘Yes,’ he agreed after a pause. ‘Thank you.’

Quatre joined him on the edge of the porch, leaning against the nearest pole as they watched the last of the sunset. It was going to be a dark night with few stars, and Quatre decided he was glad for that. It didn’t seem like the right night to be thinking about Space and the colonies out in it. For so long the ambition of their young lives had been arrival on Earth. They were finally there. They had proven beyond doubt, on their lives and on their souls, that they belonged there as much as anyone born dirt-side.

Heero sat on the stone floor, curling his knees up to his chest. Quatre slid down next to him, kicking his legs out in front of him, over the edge into the grass. He leaned back on his hands, and discovered that if he shifted just a little, his shoulder brushed Heero’s.

They sat that way until dusk became evening, and Duo returned to fetch them for supper.

 

**

 

‘So Heero and I were thinking of going into town tonight,’ Duo explained, serving Quatre a plate of curry and several pieces of garlicky naan bread. ‘He hasn’t really seen any of it yet. I thought we’d see some of the old buildings, and then we’d head up into High Street for dessert.’

‘The town is really great at night,’ Quatre said, half agreeing and half advertising for Heero’s benefit. ‘You know where you should go? The Albion. They have this amazing caramel pudding.’

Heero’s eyes came up from his plate. ‘You’re not going to come?’ Duo wore a look of surprise, which swiftly became accusation, and he was reaching for Quatre’s side before Quatre even thought to stop him.

‘I feel fine,’ he assured them both quickly. ‘I’m just a little tired tonight. I was kind of looking forward to going to bed early and getting a few extra hours of sleep. That’s all.’

‘We don’t have to go tonight,’ Duo offered.

‘Were you planning on watching me sleep?’ Quatre demanded crisply, shredding a piece of bread and dipping it into the steaming curry sauce. ‘Go do your sightseeing, and tomorrow we’ll do something all together, when I’m awake to enjoy it.’

It took a little more persuading, but he managed to get both men bundled out the door with warm coats and wallets full of coupons for the Albion’s extensive menu. Finally free of well-meaning but rather restrictive gazes, Quatre indulged himself in a leisurely shower, wrapped himself in his terry-cloth robe, and settled on the downstairs couch with a book on new energy initiatives from the L3 Green Party that he’d been meaning to read for ages. Warm, content, and engaged, he stayed that way for several hours without stirring for anything more important than a pillow to put behind his back. The other two returned a few hours later, but didn’t disturb him, and he heard them make their way upstairs without really thinking about them.

And then sometime long past midnight, Quatre realised he wasn’t alone any longer. Without seeming to, he looked about carefully, but couldn’t see anything out of place.

He swallowed. ‘Trowa,’ he said.

There was a shift, and a slim figure detached from the curtains. Quatre watched it shuffle toward him, resolving into a body with arms and legs and a head covered with a hood. Trowa reached up to pull it away from his face. ‘Quatre,’ he answered softly.

‘I didn’t really think I’d see you again,’ Quatre confessed, sinking back onto the sofa. He managed a smile with one side of his mouth. ‘I don’t suppose you’re turning yourself in.’

Trowa’s mouth quirked, too, and he sat cautiously on the opposite edge of the cushions, dropping his hood all the way. ‘You can tell Duo I’m sorry.’

‘Are you trying to piss him off?’

Trowa’s little smile grew at that, then faded abruptly. ‘You can tell him I... understand,’ he amended.

He wanted to say, Tell him yourself, or something that implied staying around. He didn’t. He waited, knowing Trowa wouldn’t have risked showing up if he didn’t have a specific purpose.

He had to wait a long time for it, but he didn’t give in. When Trowa’s eyes finally slid away from his, then looked back as if he was steeling himself, Quatre unconsciously sat straighter.

‘I’m sorry,’ Trowa said.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. It was quite possibly the first time Trowa had ever apologised to him for anything, but it struck him as being a remarkably shitty way to say good-bye.

Trowa broke their gaze again, as if he couldn’t hold it. ‘You don’t forgive me,’ he murmured.

He swallowed. ‘I’ll forgive you everything,’ he answered. ‘I always do.’

Trowa nodded, but he didn’t look up. Quatre reached for his hand, and took it before Trowa could pull away. He interlaced their fingers.

‘You don’t owe that to me,’ Trowa told him. ‘Not any more. The balance is– I’m the one who owes you, now.’

‘But you’re leaving,’ Quatre said simply. ‘So forget debts and balances and who owes what. I forgive you.’ His eyes filled suddenly, and he pushed it away viciously. Later, he thought. I won’t waste this time with him. When he could speak, he finished, ‘That’s how I want it to be.’ He tugged, and the other man came, shifting toward him as Quatre leaned back. It took a moment to make it comfortable, but when they settled, Quatre was propped against the arm of the couch with Trowa tucked against his chest, Trowa’s arm loose about his waist. He laid his cheek against Trowa’s coarse hair, and listened to their hearts beating out-of-time.

Trowa whispered, ‘You were the happiest part of my life, too.’

Quatre gazed off into the darkness with his eyes wide, knowing that once he closed them, he’d wake up alone.


End file.
